





















































































COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 























* 




















































• 
































* 


































































DRINK 

A LOVE STORY ON 
A GREAT QUESTION 


BY 

HALL CAINE 

Author ol “The Christian, " The 
Prodigal Son/' etc., etc. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK MCMVII 








■ 

■{liSsiwiy of CONGRESS 
I Vwo Conies Received 

I MAh 30 190/ 



Copyright 1895, 1907, by 


D. Appleton and Company 


Published March , 1907. 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 

In my ignorance of medical science I dare not take any 
responsibility whatever for the theories advanced in that 
part of this little novel which deals with the claims of hyp- 
notism. I have only attempted, in the role of the auto- 
biographical story-teller, to dramatize, as far as a layman 
may know and understand them, the conflicting opinions of 
those who have written or spoken on the subject in England, 
France and Germany. My own contribution to the discussion 
of the great drink question is the simple and human one of 
exhibiting the power of imagination on a victim of alcoholism, 
and the mighty influence of Hope on a mind diseased. 

Drink itself is the great hypnotist. 

It is a commonplace to say that the problem of intemper- 
ance is one of the gravest and most urgent that has ever con- 
fronted humanity, and that the first necessity is that of a 
clear comprehension of the root of the evil. Is habitual in- 
temperance a disease or a sin? If it is a disease, the victim 
is an object for compassion, and the cure lies at the doors of 
the physicians. If it is a sin, the transgressor is a subject for 
reproof and punishment, and the duty of moral regeneration 
is in the hands of the clergy. If it is both a disease and a sin, 
the legislators share with the physicians and the clergy the 
task of healing and controlling it. 

Which is the true place for the habitual drunkard — the 
hospital, the reformatory, or the prison? On the answer to 
that question the welfare of a vast proportion of the human 
family seems to depend. Would it wrong the truth to say 
that neither the law nor the church nor medical science 
seems to have made up its mind? 

Besides the general question of intemperance, my little 
novel is intended to deal with the particular problem of alco- 
holism among women. If it be true that alcoholic poisoning 
in mothers is a pregnant cause of physical and moral degen- 
eration, then the momentary momentousness of many political 
questions is surely as nothing compared with the age-long 
urgency of the problem of motherhood and drink. Is there, 
indeed, any graver question on which the conscience of 
humanity sleeps? H. C. 

Isle of Man., 1906. 


) , , ' ; ‘ 1 n , W •* ,‘,iV / lV :'f 4 < • / |f .*1 . •/, .•'X ! 

■ 


V 










■ ;> - ; . :’ 






v . 1 1 ' ■'. 


,;:. \ ..'.V. ■. . - " -v ,' 

ft k ^ . : V $#.?$ ? :. : - m 1 1 1 


■ ! :■-. ■ «•& .1 V >' \Li 




« % !!*A -.• '• r v , .■■■'■ ■• \jiU 


% 

88 f»d»i 


WM'Ml 


^ ’ ; 

• ••' .- 


■ ' w»: -j, v • 

rami 


ff; ; . 

,•> ' > 


|J , . , y I > VI) *4 V * *• . „ .> . 1 , , T \ • V ' 

Xw * # i .v ],’ 1 . • » . .* • • •£ . ■•'•-. v \ -.' . •• <! .. 3 P . 

fi K.'.- '*• 'krtt-m. iivni - EM \\-A r ’liVV . •■ • - - : * 


■Wi :« m WM' 






l iiffl 




f'-fF.V V, 



%j 1 v -i ■ A ,&■ *ii! •',/».'» • ♦’P»'3 , t •^-TtK? 

f - m 3 






?•> ■ ■, 


m mr^-B 






DRINK 


CHAPTER ONE. 


T Euston station at 9 p. m. on Sunday, the twenty-third 



of December, 18 — , I leaned out of the window of a 


carriage of the Scotch train, and Sir George Chute 
shook hands with me from the platform. 

“ Good-bye, Robert,” said Sir George. “ Mind you come 
to me the very moment of your return. I shall be anxious 
to hear everything. Our good friends at Cleator are half 
strangers to both of us, you know — well, to me, at all events. 
My kind regards to Miss Clousedale — to Mrs. Hill, too — 
Good-bye 1 Good-bye ! ” 

I waved my hand to him as the train slid away from 
the platform. He had dined with me that night in my rooms 
at the Temple, and had come to Euston to see me off. Sir 
George was five-and-twenty years my senior, but nevertheless 
my closest friend. In earlier life he had been the friend of 
my father. Forty years before they were fellow clerks in 
the office of a country attorney. Their courses then fell 
apart. Sir George Chute had become the most prosperous 
solicitor in London, and my father. Sir Robert Harcourt, 
was an Indian judge. But though separated by half the 
world, their friendship had been maintained. I was born in 
India, and when at fourteen I was sent to England to begin 
my education at a public school, it was Sir George who 
established me at Harrow. In due time he sent me on to 
Oxford, and afterwards opened up to me my career at the 
Bar. I had been five years a junior, and my success was 
due in great part to Sir George. He was more than my 
friend — he was my foster-father. 


1 


2 


DRINK 


But the debt I owed him included a claim that touched 
me closer than any material obligations. He had been the 
means by which I had come to know Lucy Clousedale. Lucy 
had come up to London from her home in Cumberland to 
consult him as a solicitor in relation to the mining estate 
which was her inheritance. She was two-and-twenty, and 
both her parents were long dead. Her only companion 
throughout life had been an old nurse, who was a maiden 
lady, but was always addressed as Mrs. Hill. The friend- 
liness of the orphan girl had touched Sir George, and he 
had invited her to his house in Cheyne Walk. It was there 
that I had met her. To meet her was to admire her, for 
surely no lovelier woman ever lived. Her health, her sweet- 
ness, her simplicity, her naturalness, her freshness had made 
a deep impression. This was early in May, and during the 
next month or two she had been invited everywhere. Lucy 
spoke with a slight northern accent, and sang old English 
songs. Everything was new to her, and everything was 
wonderful. It will not wrong the truth to say that her 
freshness and naivete had made her the success of the hour. 

I was a happy man, for our acquaintance had ripened 
into friendship, and our friendship into love. Before she 
left London at the end of June, Lucy had promised to be my 
wife. We were not to be married until the following spring, 
but I was to visit her at her home at Christmas. Her last 
evening in London we spent together at Sir George Chute’s. 
It was a sweet and happy time. The soft glow of a London 
sunset lay along the sleepy Thames as we sat in the balcony 
and looked towards the Old Battersea Bridge. Before the 
lamps were lit she sang “ Sally in Our Alley.” I had one 
pang only — the thought of our six months’ separation. 

But that was over at length. The long tale of my duties 
at the courts was at an end for the present. Christmas was 
near, and I was in the train for Cumberland. I lay back in 
my seat and beguiled the first hour of my journey with a 
packet of old letters from my breast-pocket. Most of them 
were from Lucy — the daintiest little things, in the neatest 
penmanship. I noticed for the second time that in this 
regard two of the letters were unlike the rest. The hand- 


DRINK 


3 


writing was irregular, and the sentences were jerky and 
inconsequent. Sir George had chanced to see one of the two 
as it lay on the table at my chambers. “ Not so well, eh? ” 
said Sir George. He fancied himself as an expert in that 
direction. And he was right. Temporary indisposition had 
been the explanation. Lucy herself had said so. 

The only letters in my old packet that were not Lucy's 
were from my father. I had written to tell him of my forth- 
coming marriage, and he had answered with as much cor- 
diality as I had a right to expect. He trusted that my 
determination was wise, that my action was not premature, 
that I saw my course clear before me. The only significant 
passage was of the nature of a warning: “Above all, my 
dear boy, let me hope and trust that the woman who is to 
be your wife and my daughter comes of a good and healthy 
stock. Living in this country, where natural selection in 
marriage is hampered by consideration of caste, I see more 
plainly than ever how terrible are the consequences of 
heredity, not only in actual physical taint, but also in the 
countless forms of bad habits which are equivalent to dis- 
ease/’ 

I left the Scotch mail at Penrith at three in the morning, 
but Lucy’s home was in the iron district of Cleator Moor, 
and I had to change at a second junction before reaching 
the last stage of my journey. This junction was in the heart 
of the Cumberland hills. Day had not yet dawned when I 
got there; thick snow lay on the ground, the morning was 
cold, and I had half an hour to wait for the local train. 
With the help of a porter I found my way into the waiting- 
room of the little wooden station-house. A brisk fire was 
burning there, and a group of miners were sitting on the 
forms about it, smoking their clay pipes, with their elbows 
on their knees, and their lamps hanging from their wrists. 
They made room for me at the fire, but went on with their 
talk without regard to my presence. I asked if they were 
going by the train to Cleator. They answered “Yes,” and 
that they worked in the Clousedale mines in the pit known 
as “Owd Boney.” I learned that “Owd Boney” meant “old 
bone of contention,” and that popular nickname had reference 


4 


DRINK 


to the pit’s history. Also I gathered that the men lived at 
the neighboring town of Cockermouth, and were that morn- 
ing starting afresh on their fortnightly “ shift.” 

“But Christmas Eve!” I said — “surely you take holiday 
at Christmas ?” They laughed and answered that all seasons 
were alike to the miner. 

“Sunday or Monday, it’s all t’same,” said one. “Th’en- 
gine aCt’pit-head doesna stop for t’church service.” 

“And t’boiler at t’bottom is as thirsty as owd Geordie 
Clous’al hissel,” said another, and then they laughed and 
puffed and spat in a chuckling chorus. 

The train steamed up and whistled; I got into the same 
carriage with the miners, and we ran into the mining country. 
Over the snow-covered dales the day was now dawning. 
The mountains were falling behind us, and we were coming 
on to a broad stretch of moorland. I could see ahead in the 
increasing gray light the wooden gear of many pit-shafts, 
and the smoke and flame from the squat chimneys of the 
smelting-houses. The snow was thinner at every mile, and 
the bare ground was red and black, as if with cinders and 
the refuse of iron ore. 

“You spoke of old George Clousedale,” I said. “What 
is he?” 

“A dead man,” said one of the miners. 

“What was he ?” 

“The owner of 'Owd Boney/ and half the pits of 
Cleator.” 

“Any relative of Miss Clousedale, of Clousedale Hall?” 
I asked. 

“Lucy ?” said several voices together. 

“Well, yes, 'Lucy/ if you like.” 

“Thirsty owd Geordie Clous’al was Lucy’s grandfadder.” 

I was curious, but I was vexed. “Men,” I said, “it’s 
only right to tell you at once that Miss Clousedale is a friend 
of mine, and that I’m now on my way to visit her.” 

They understood me instantly and made amends with 
manly simplicity. “No disrespect to Miss Lucy, sure. Nob- 
but goodwill to the young lady, sir. We’re eating her bread, 
and we’ve nowt agen her.” 


DRINK 


5 


Nothing further was said until we came within a mile of 
the village, which I had seen lying on the moor-top under a 
canopy of smoke. Then one of the miners leaned over to 
the carriage window and pointed to a house which we were 
rapidly passing. 

“Yon’s Clous’al Hall, sir,” he said. 

I jumped up and looked out. The house was a large 
square mansion of modern date and of no particular char- 
acter, standing deep in its own grounds behind thick clumps 
of trees which were all leafless. The sun had broken out, and 
a watery gleam lay along the slate roof and part of the 
grass on the lawn. Smoke was coming from the chimneys, 
and just at that moment somebody was raising the white 
blind of one of the windows. Such was the home of Lucy. 
As the train passed I noticed that not far from the gate of 
Clousedale Hall there was a small group of cottages with a 
little public-house at their nearest comer. The line ran so 
close that I could read the sign. It was the “Clousedale 
Arms.” 

We drew up at the station, and I looked around to see 
if there was anyone to meet me. It was still as early as 
half-past eight, and the morning was chill, but in spite of 
reason I had half-cherished the hope that Lucy herself would 
have driven down. At least I thought Mrs. Hill might be 
there. I saw neither. There was no carriage, no trap, no 
recognizable servant of any kind. When the miners had 
trooped away, the platform would have been empty but for 
myself and the servants of the railway. I hailed the porter. 

“Anybody here who can carry my bag to Clousedale 
Hall?” I asked. 

“Then mebbe you’re the gentleman that’s expected,” he 
said, and diving into his jacket pocket he produced a letter. 

It was addressed “Robert Harcourt, Esq.,” and was not 
in Lucy’s handwriting. The letter was from Mrs. Hill, and 
was dated 9 p. M., Sunday, December 23d. 

“Dear Sir, — I am sorry to tell you that Lucy has sud- 
denly become ill, and that the doctor thinks it necessary 
that she should have absolute quiet and rest during the next 
few days. There is no danger of any kind, and therefore 


6 


DRINK 


1 trust you will not feel anxiety, still less alarm. But, 
under the circumstances, I am reluctantly compelled to ask 
you not to come to Clousedale Hall at present. I have taken 
the liberty of engaging rooms for you at the ‘Wheatsheaf/ in 
the village, where I trust you will be comfortable until such 
time as I can properly and safely give my dear one the 
great happiness of asking you to remove your quarters to this 
house. 

‘‘With every apology, disappointment and regret, I am, 
dear Mr. Harcourt, yours very sincerely, 

“Martha Hill.” 

“Take my bag to the ‘Wheatsheaf/ porter,” I said. 

He took it up and trudged off, and I followed him. I 
was pained, dazed, and bewildered. 


CHAPTER TWO. 

B REAKFAST was ready for me at the inn, but I could 
not touch it until I had written to Lucy. I told her 
with what concern I heard of her illness, how I hoped 
for her speedy recovery, how grievous was my disappoint- 
ment at not seeing her immediately on my arrival in her 
country, with much besides of too intimate a nature to be re- 
peated here. After this letter had been despatched by hand, 
I sat down to breakfast, and the landlady herself waited upon 
me. She was a worthy Cumberland woman in middle life, very 
staid and serious, but somewhat more talkative than the gen- 
erality of her race. Her name was Tyson; her husband was 
something of a sportsman ; they were living on the Clousedale 
property. 

Mrs. Tyson had much to say about Lucy, whom she had 
known since earliest childhood — of her goodness to the poor, 
her personal sweetness to everybody, her generosity (ex- 
hibited in many ways) , and generally of the qualities of mind 
and heart which had endeared her beyond all others to the 


DRINK 


7 


people of the district wherein she had been born and reared. 
It did not surprise me that, as seen in the eyes of those who 
had known her longest and most intimately, my darling 
proved to be as good as she was beautiful. I gathered that 
she was interested in various local institutions for the social 
welfare of the people — in workmen’s clubs, an evening 
ragged-school, and a branch of the Rechabite order, which 
she had helped to establish. It appeared that, at her own 
cost — the parish church lying two miles away in the dale — 
she had even gone so far as to build and endow a little 
chapel-of-ease for the use of the community which had 
grown up on the moor-top around the pits which her family 
had worked for generations. The landlady was warm in her 
narration of these good offices, and when I inquired about 
Lucy’s health, if it had ever hitherto given cause for anxiety, 
she answered “No,” that only twice before, as far back as 
they could remember, had she been at all unwell, and both 
attacks had been within the past six months. 

“Nothing serious, surely?” I said. 

“Nay, not that I know of,” said the landlady. “But the 
poor young lady seemed that glad to be better that she never 
knew how to be good enough to anybody the moment she 
was gotten round. And a cruel pity it was to see her white 
face going from house to house with her basket and her 
purse. It was at one such time she got her new Scotch par- 
son to start the Rechabites. The sweet little body went over 
the moor herself, persuading the miners to take the pledge — 
and a good thing for some of them, too, for all it’s the wife 
of a publican that says so.” 

My night-long journey had wearied me, and I went to 
bed and slept soundly. Some time late in the afternoon I 
awoke, and then it occurred to me that it might, perhaps, set 
at rest the anxiety which I could not help but feel if I were 
to go to see Lucy’s doctor. On this errand, after I had taken 
some dinner, I set out at the direction of the landlady. 

The doctor was not at home. He was at the public 
dispensary in the village. I learned that this dispensary was 
another of Lucy’s charities. The outer room was filled with 
women and children waiting their turn to enter the room 


s 


DRINK 


within. As I stood among them, while my card was taken 
to the doctor, I heard my dear one’s name coupled with 
praises and blessings. 

“It’ll be made up to her,” said one woman. 

“The Lord will pay her back,” said- another. 

The doctor’s name was Godwin. At first sight it oc- 
curred to me that he hardly justified it. I found him a hard- 
faced man, with a square head and steely gray eyes. He had 
been educated in Germany, and I learned afterwards that he 
took pride in being abreast of all modern developments of his 
science. This, and his resolute personal character, had given 
him a certain superiority over old-fashioned county prac- 
titioners, though he was understood to be an Atheist, and 
certainly never attended church. 

I explained that I was a friend of Miss Clousedale’s, and 
he seemed to be aware of our relations. I inquired if her ill- 
ness were at all serious, and he answered me less promptly 
than I had expected. 

“No, not serious — not at present,” he said. 

As he volunteered no further explanation, I made bold 
to ask if Lucy’s trouble were a feminine ailment. After a 
moment he answered “Yes,” and was silent again. 

“Some nervous complaint, no doubt?” I said, where- 
upon he said “Yes” once more, repeated my words mechani- 
cally, and then looked up quickly and asked if I were making 
any “stay” in the district. 

I was nettled by his reserve, and told him that Lucy 
was to be my wife, that I had come expressly and by an old 
appointment from London to visit her; that, by the wish of 
her nurse, and, as I understood, by his own wish also, I was 
now staying at the inn in the village, but I was looking 
forward to changing my quarters to Clousedale Hall as soon 
as he could assure me that my presence there would be no 
disadvantage to his patient. 

“It will be some days still,” he said. 

I thought the man was treating me with scant courtesy, 
and I made no disguise of my annoyance. On leaving I went 
the length of hinting that perhaps I should think it necessary 
to telegraph for a specialist. My threat had no effect. The 


DRINK 


9 


man saw me to the door with frigid politeness and all but 
the silence of a Sphinx. 

Going back by the main street of the village, I passed 
in the gathering darkness of the winter evening a little red- 
brick Gothic church, standing in the midst of a closely popu- 
lated district of very poor cottages. It was the chapel-of- 
ease that had been built and endowed by Lucy. I recognized 
it by its foundation-stone, which bore a gilt-lettered inscrip- 
tion in my dear one’s honor. There were lights burning, 
the door was open, and I glanced within. Some ladies were 
decorating the windows and the timbers of the open roof, 
from ladders held by two or three miners. 

When I got back to the “Wheatsheaf,” I asked if there 
were any message from Clousedale Hall. There was no 
letter, but a gentleman was waiting to see me. It was the 
clergyman. His name was McPherson, and he was a middle- 
aged Scotchman of Severe aspect. He had come to tell me 
that my letter had been received, but that Miss Clousedale 
was not well enough to reply to it. Then, on his own ac- 
count, he proceeded to advise the postponement of my in- 
tended visit. 

“Is she so seriously unwell?” I asked. 

“I fear she is,” he answered. 

“What is her illness?” 

He hesitated a moment, and then said, “I cannot rightly 
say.” 

“Has she ever had it before ?” 

“Twice before.” 

“And she recovered on both occasions ?” 

“By the grace of God, yes — for the time, at all events.” 

My anger was rising. This man, like the doctor, was 
keeping me at arm’s length. 

“And you advise me,” I said, “to go back to London ?” 

“For the present,” he replied. 

“Without seeing her?” 

“To see her would be impossible.” 

“Is it her own wish?” 

He hesitated again, then answered falteringly, “Yes — 
I think so— that was my inference.” 


10 


DRINK 


My patience was well-nigh exhausted before I saw the 
clergyman out of the house. Another man was then coming 
in at the door — a big, lusty, deep-chested fellow, with a game- 
bag over his shoulder and a gun under his arm. It was 
Tyson, the landlord. He saluted me as we passed in the 
hall. There was something open and fearless in the air of 
the man that appealed to me at the moment, and, having 
parted from my parson, I followed my landlord into his little 
red parlor at the back of the bar. He gave me a cheery 
welcome, and began to joke about my visitor, called him 
“Mr. Sky-Pilot/’ and said it was the first time his reverence 
had deigned to cross the threshold of the “Wheatsheaf.” I 
learned that Mr. McPherson was a fanatical teetotaller, and 
that this was understood to be the qualification that had led 
to his appointment by the patroness of his living. 

“No wonder, nowther,” said Tyson, “seeing the lesson 
she’s been getting all the days of her life, poor lady !” 

“What lesson?” I asked. 

“Nay, hast a nivver heard tell of owd Geordie Clous’al ?” 

I remembered the talk of the miners in the train. 
“Thirsty owd Georgie ?” I said. 

“The verra man,” said my landlord. “She’s for breaking 
the curse, I reckon.” 

“What curse?” I asked. 

“Then you know nowt of the Clous’al history, sir ?” 

I had to confess that though Miss Clousedale was my 
friend, my intimate friend, 1 knew nothing about her family. 
Mrs. Tyson was laying her husband’s tea. “Shaf, John!” 
she said, “don’t bother thy head with such owd wife’s 
stories.” 

I drew my chair to the fire. “A story of a curse?” I 
said. “I must hear it at all costs.” 

Tyson laughed. “Thoo must tak’ it as it comes, then,” 
he said, and while he munched his great mouthfuls he told 
his tale. 

Old George Clousedale, the grandfather of Lucy, and 
the founder of the fortunes of the Clousedale family, was a 
hard and cruel, master. It was told of him that if he saw a 


DRINK 


ii 


poor widow picking cinders from the refuse of the smelting- 
house, to warm her old bones on a wintry day, he would 
drive her away with threats and oaths. One Sunday morn- 
ing two of his miners were walking home from the church 
in the valley, when, crossing the beck, they kicked up a 
bright red stone. It was good, solid iron ore. This was a 
find that promised great results. The men agreed to say 
nothing of their discovery until such time as they could take 
out royalties and begin mining on their own account. 

One of the two was faithful to his bond; the other 
broke it secretly. While the first was borrowing money 
towards his visit to the lord of the manor, the second went 
to the house of his master, told all, and accepted a bribe of 
twenty pounds. Within a week George Clousedale had 
bought up the royalties of another mine, and was sinking 
another shaft. The miner who had been betrayed was mad 
with rage. He went in search of his faithless partner and 
thrashed him within an inch of his life. The man was ar- 
rested, and George Clousedale was the magistrate by whom 
he was tried. He was sentenced to some months’ imprison- 
ment. 

The poor fellow was young, and he had been the only 
support of his mother, and when he was sent to Carlisle the 
old woman went up to the house of George Clousedale and 
asked for the master. He came out to her in the hall, and 
she railed at him as a traitor and a tyrant. Losing himself 
at her insults, he snatched a riding-whip from the wall, 
struck her on the head, and told her to be off to hell, and 
never dare to show her face in his house again. The woman 
drew herself up to him and cried, “You brutal ruffian ! It’s 
yourself that will go to hell ; but before you go you will have 
the fire of hell in your body, and feel a thirst that can never 
be quenched ! You will drink and drink till you die, and your 
children will drink, and your children’s children, and your 
great-grandchildren, for ever and ever!” 

“But,” I said, “you don’t mean to tell me the curse came 
true ?” 

“Have it as you like, sir,” said Tyson; “but in less nor 
six weeks Geordie Clous’al was tak’n with a burning heat 


12 


DRINK 


of his inside, and he drank, and drank, and drank, and in a 
twelvemonth he was dead.” 

“What children had he ?” 

“Only a son — young Geordie, as we caw’d him. Geordie 
laughed at the owd tale as they telt of, but at forty he was 
seized with the same burning thirst, and at fifty he was in a 
drunkard’s grave.” 

“And — and Lucy — Miss Clousedale?” I asked. 

“She was nobbut a bairn when her f adder died, and 
they’ve taken Time by the forelock, and brought her up 
teetotal.” 

I laughed, Tyson laughed, his wife laughed, and we all 
laughed together. “A good old witch story,” I said, with a 
shiver. “I wonder whoever makes these gruesome yarns ?” 

But the thing possessed me. I came back to it again and 
again. The pit that had been the first cause of the quarrel 
was the one known as “Owd Boney.” It brought wealth to 
the Clousedale family and was the chief source of Lucy’s 
fortune. Her father died rich, but his last ten years were 
years of pain and terror. The unquenchable thirst which tor- 
mented him came in periodical attacks which grew more and 
more frequent, appearing first at intervals of six months, 
then of three, and then of one. Thus in narrowing circles the 
burning fever encompassed the man like a deadly serpent, 
and throttled him at the end. 

My landlord’s story might have interested me at any 
time, but at that moment it seemed to have a horrible fas- 
cination. Under other circumstances I might have specu- 
lated on the power of imagination to induce the fate it 
dreads; but the creeping mystery of Lucy’s illness made it 
difficult to think dispassionately. I hardly dared to formu- 
late the fears that were floating in my soul. 

Eventually I made up my mind to “sleep on it,” and so 
went off to bed. Some hours later I awoke from a fitful and 
troubled sleep, and heard the singing of hymns in the street 
outside. I had forgotten that it was Christmas Eve. 


DRINK 


13 


CHAPTER THREE. 

T HE only decision the morning brought me was that I 
should write to Mrs. Hill, asking permission to call. 
This I did, with many expressions of solicitude and 
no concealment of the disquietude caused by the clergyman’s 
summary message. I proposed to go up to Clousedale Hail 
in the course of the afternoon, but asked for an answer in the 
meantime encouraging me to do so. 

It was Christmas morning, and the bells were ringing 
for service. I went to church. The pew under the pulpit was 
empty — it was Lucy’s pew. They had decorated it with ivy 
and holly and some sprigs of flowering gorse. There was a 
large congregation, chiefly of miners and their children. The 
minister was the Rev. McPherson, my visitor of the night 
before. Between the second lesson and the sermon he asked 
for the prayer of all present for their dear friend and 
donor, the patroness of their church, who at that hour of 
rejoicing lay sick at home. Many heads were bowed in- 
stantly — there could be no question of the response. 

As I was coming out at the close, somebody touched me 
on the arm. It was an elderly man of a cheerful face, and 
with small, twinkling eyes behind large spectacles. He told 
me his name was Youdale, and he was the manager of 
the Clousedale mines. There was to be the usual Christ- 
mas dinner for poor children given by Miss Clousedale at 
the church schools — would I care to be present? We went 
along together. The school-house was thronged with the 
little mites, all very untidy, very dirty, very odorous, very 
noisy, but very happy, in spite of their condition. Grace 
was sung, and then numbers of steaming hot-pots were 
brought in. 

The youngsters were stretching themselves with reple- 
tion before the dishes had been emptied. Thanks were 
offered, and then my friend of the spectacles got up on 
two forms to deliver an address. He began by regretting 
the absence of their beloved benefactress, who, out of the 
kindness of her heart, had provided this Christmas meal 


H 


DRINK 


for the children, but by reason of illness could not partake 
of the good things herself. Let them pray that God would 
be gracious to her and bring her safely out of the valley 
of the shadow, to be a guide and a blessing to all who 
loved and revered her. A young school-mistress sat down 
at a harmonium, and then the little folks shambled up and 
sang “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.” It was more than I 
could bear, and I stole out unobserved. 

That evening I had a terrible shock. All the afternoon I 
had waited in pain for the reply to my letter addressed to the 
nurse. It did not come, but towards nightfall there came a 
letter from Lucy herself. It was penned in the same irregular 
hand which had struck me so painfully in the two letters 
received in London, and it was written in the same jerky 
and inconsequent sentences. I cannot attempt to transcribe 
it. Every syllable burnt itself into my brain with a finger of 
fire, but I will not dare to set it down. It begged, it prayed, 
it supplicated me not to come to the house. It craved my 
indulgence, my forgiveness, my everlasting forgetfulness of 
one who was unworthy of my love and devotion. She was 
ill, very ill, but she was also worse than ill. I must let her 
escape from our engagement. It had been the joy and charm 
of her life, but now it was the terror and torment of her 
existence. She must break it; I must go back to London; 
we must never think of each other again. God forgive her 
and pity her! God be good to me and keep me and pre- 
serve me ! 

Such a letter could have but one effect. I snatched up my 
hat and turned my face towards Clousedale Hall. While 
going through the village I walked briskly, but on reaching 
the lanes I set off to run. Upon reaching the group of cot- 
tages that stood near the gate of the house I was bathed in 
perspiration and my heart was beating audibly. Not to defeat 
my purpose with such violence of zeal, I turned in at the 
“ Clousedale Arms ” and called for a glass of brandy. It was 
one of those old-fashioned public-houses which have the 
counter partitioned into compartments like the boxes of a 
pawnbroker’s shop. In one of these compartments I stood 
and cooled myself and sipped my brandy, while I tried to 


DRINK 


15 


collect my thoughts and determine what I was to do. There 
was a woman in the compartment next to me, and the land- 
lady was leaning across and talking to her in whispers. 

“ Fm sorry Maggie’s losin’ her place,” said one of the 

two. 

“ She knows far ower much,” said the other. “ Only yes- 
terday the mistress gave her half a sovereign to steal out and 
fetch her a bottle of something, and when she went back 
never asked her for a penny of change.” 

“Was it the doctor that gave Maggie her notice, then?” 

“ Like it was, but they have telt me no particulars.” 

The approach to Clousedale Hall was by a curving path 
bordered by trees, which, though leafless, made the way dark 
and gave out gruesome noises in a wind that was then rising. 
I found the door with difficulty, for there was no lamp burn- 
ing at the porch, and I had nothing to guide me save the 
dim light that came from behind the blinds of the windows 
of the upper story. It was not easy to get attention, and 
when after a long delay a little elderly manservant with a 
candle appeared in answer to my loud knocking, he held the 
door narrowly ajar while he told me that his mistress was 
very ill, and the housekeeper unable to leave her. I was not 
to be put off with such excuses, and brushing by the old man 
into the hall, I told him to take my name instantly to Mrs. 
Hill , and request her to see me immediately. This, however, 
was not needful, for while I was speaking Mrs. Hill herself 
came hurriedly downstairs, as if she had been listening from 
the landing above, and was answering my emphatic sum- 
mons. 

I found her strangely agitated and painfully changed. In- 
stead of the gracious, elderly lady in the unfashionable black 
silk, with soft manners and gentle speech — the companion of 
my dear one in London — I saw before me a nervous and 
hysterical old woman in a plaid dress. She took the candle 
from the manservant and asked me into a room without a 
fire. Then, closing the door and speaking in whispers, she 
delivered herself of many apologies and excuses, saying it 
was a grief to her to be so inhospitable, and that this was a 
cause of unhappiness to Lucy also. When I asked if I might 


1 6 


DRINK 


see my darling, she appeared to be thrown into a state of 
extreme perturbation, declaring that it would be impossible, 
and that the doctor had forbidden all visits whatever except 
those of the clergyman. And when I inquired if she knew 
the nature of the letter which Lucy had sent me, her agitation 
increased, and she protested that, though it was written with- 
out her knowledge, she was afraid that what it suggested 
might be for the best. 

“ Is it true, then ? ” I said. “Am I to understand that 
Lucy’s illness is beyond hope of recovery ? ” 

I had asked the question contemptuously, and I expected 
a prompt negative. It irritated me that the reply was falter- 
ing and uncertain. 

“I cannot say — I’m not sure — the doctor would know 
best.” 

My patience was gone, and my answer was without cere- 
mony. 

“Then, by ! the doctor shall tell me, if I have to 

wring it out of the man’s throat. This mummery of a mystery 
is too much for me, and I shall stand no more of it!” 

With that I flung out of the house and pulled the door 
after me. It had got into my head that Lucy was the victim of 
a conspiracy, and that the two men, the doctor and the clergy- 
man, were at the bottom of everything. With heart and 
brain aflame I went tramping down the curving path. In my 
mind’s eye I was seeing my dear girl as if by flashes of light- 
ning, first with her beautiful bright eyes full of youth and 
health and happiness and love, and next in the toils of some 
hideous trouble. 

I was awakened from my vision by a sudden apparition. 
It was that of a woman coming out of the “ Clousedale 
Arms” as I passed by. Her figure was young; she wore a 
little dark shawl over her head; her appearance was untidy 
and neglected. She came out of the public-house by stealth, 
made a quick pause as I approached, and then half turned, 
as if thinking to go back. At that moment by the light of 
the window I saw her face. It was a horrible shock. The 
face bore an ugly resemblance to the face of Lucy. When 
I looked again the woman was gone. 


DRINK 


1 7 


I recovered myself and called after hen Her footsteps 
were going off in the darkness. 

“ Wait ! ” I cried, and I swung round to follow. I saw the 
woman turn in at the gate of Clousedale Hall. 

“ Wait ! ” I cried again, and I hastened my steps. When 
I reached the avenue the footsteps had ceased and the dark 
figure had disappeared. There was no noise but the creaking 
of the bare boughs overhead. 

I returned to the house, and with both fists thumped heav- 
ily on the door. It was opened this time by Mrs. Hill herself. 
She looked like a woman distracted. 

“ Mrs. Hill,” I said, “I am sorry to be rude, but I demand 
to see Miss Clousedale — I must see her instantly ! ” 

She burst out crying, and I stepped into the house. Then 
I observed that the whole place was in disorder. The ser- 
vants, with candles in their hands, were running up and 
down stairs, and in and out of rooms on the ground floor. 

“Where shall I find her?” 

At that the poor old soul made a clean breast of it. Lucy 
had gone out of the house. They had been keeping her a 
prisoner and watching her constantly, but she had escaped. 
Snatching the opportunity of Mrs. Hill’s absence at the 
moment of my call, Lucy had slipped away, and nobody 
knew what had become of her. 

“ Good Lord Almighty ! ” I thought, and a terrible fear 
took hold of me. 

I was outside again in a moment, running towards the 
gate. I thought I heard something passing me in the dark- 
ness. I stopped and stretched my arms towards the sound, but 
there was nothing there. Then I heard a rustle as of a 
woman’s dress along the grass, dying off in the direction of 
the house. At the next moment I saw distinctly a female 
figure moving across the windows, where flickering lights 
were coming and going. 

I ran after her and overtook her. She was throwing up 
the sash of a bay window and creeping through, when I 
caught her tightly in my arms. 

“ Who are you ? ” I cried, and she gave a smothered cry 
of “ Let me go ! let me go ! ” 


i8 


DRINK 


“Not till I know who you are.” 

“ Let me go S ” 

“ Who are you ? ” 

Our voices had drawn the servants, and they came run- 
ning into the room with their candles. Then 1 saw the face 
of the woman whom I held in my arms. 

It was Lucy — Lucy, my love, my dear one, my wife that 
was to be — Lucy Clousedale, the beloved of everybody, the 
saintly soul, the generous heart, the sweet and beautiful flower 
of girlhood just budding into womanhood — and she was a 
poor, wretched dipsomaniac under the terrors of a curse. 


CHAPTER FOUR. 

N EXT day I was back at the Temple, yet before leaving 
Cumberland I heard the whole pitiful story from the 
nurse. Until after her return from London, Lucy 
had never touched intoxicating drink. But London had ex- 
hausted her. The new scene, the new life, our engagement 
and our parting had played upon her nerves, and she had 
begun to show symptoms of hysteria. Then the doctor had 
ordered egg-and-brandy twice daily, to build up the burnt-out 
nervous system. The nurse had been horrified. She had 
reminded him of the death of Lucy’s father and grandfather, 
and of the curse that hung over the family. The doctor had 
only smiled. Did she expect any sensible man of modern 
ideas to be influenced in his practice by such foolish supersti- 
tions? The young lady required a stimulant, and she must 
have it. 

Within a fortnight Lucy had become the slave of her 
medicine. She took it, not twice daily, but four times, six 
times, ten times. An unquenchable thirst possessed her, a 
burning fever, an insatiable craving. The doctor had begun 
to talk of latent alcoholism in the blood, and to treat his 
patient as if she had been a mad woman. An acute attack 
of two days’ duration had ended in convulsions, and then my 


DRINK 


19 


darling had been herself again. The thirst, the fever, the 
crave had gone, leaving her well, though weak and faint. 

But the poison had been subdued, not expelled. Three 
months later the craving had returned, the former symptoms 
had been renewed, and the same agony gone through. The 
attack had lasted longer this time, and the prostration that 
followed had been greater. 

When the crave came back for the third time it was 
within two months of the second attack, and that was the 
hapless period into which my visit had fallen. Such was 
the miserable story of my dear one’s abject condition, of 
the narrowing circle of her doom; and in horror, and the 
cowardice of horror, I had fled away. 

There was a letter waiting for me at the Temple. It 
was from my father, and it was full of heart-breaking good 
spirits. “ Since I wrote last I have been thinking that, as 
I have only one son in the world, and am soon to lose him 
in that old cruel battle of father’s love against woman’s love, 
the least I can do is to show my front to the enemy and die 
with a brave face. So please take warning that, having asked 
and obtained six months’ leave of absence, I intend to present 
myself at your wedding in the spring, when, if my foe is 
only good and sweet to me, I may perhaps capitulate with- 
out much struggle. My affectionate remembrances to her in 
the meantime, and this message for my Christmas greeting — 
that my boy’s letters have made an old man more than half 
in love with her already.” 

The same night I found my way to Cheyne Walk, where 
I told the whole story to Sir George. Under the quiet manner 
of a man familiar with shocking stories and self-trained to 
betray no surprise, I saw his strange and painful emotion. 
As I sat with head down before the fire, my old friend laid 
an affectionate hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, 
my boy, very sorry; but there’s no help for it.” 

“You mean that Lucy’s case is hopeless?” 

“ I’m afraid it is. Whatever the cause — hereditary taint 
or hereditary curse — the poor child is under the ban.” 

“For mercy’s sake don’t say so! Is there nothing I 
can do?” 


20 


DRINK 


“ Yes, there is one thing — one only.” 

“ What's that?” 

“Take your discharge, and thank God for your escape. 
You are on the threshold of life — think what it would be to 
drag at your heels a drunken woman.’' 

The word struck me like a blow in the face, and I cried 
out with the pain. “ She may be saved yet,” I said. “ Who 
shall say she may not ? ” 

“Ask the doctors,” said Sir George; “they’ll tell you 
there’s hardly a recorded instance of the reformation of a 
woman who has once fallen under the curse of drink.” 

When I got up to go, I showed Sir George the letter from 
my father. “Telegraph,” he said; “you must stop him. 
Telegraph immediately.” 

I walked home by way of the Strand. It was Boxing 
Night, and some of the later theatres were discharging their 
dense crowds into the streets. The people were talking loudly 
and laughing. Many of them were making with all haste for 
the public-houses. There were only a few minutes left before 
closing time. Drink, drink — during the next few days it 
seemed to pursue and haunt me. I saw it everywhere — its 
wrecks and ruins dogged my footsteps. Oh I if I could 
have wiped it out in one night, how sure I was that the 
world would awake to a new life in the morning such as it 
can never know under the worst tyranny, the most abject 
slavery, the most degrading curse that has yet beset human- 
ity ! 

Towards the end of the week a letter came from Lucy. 
The attack was over, and she was herself again; but she 
saw more plainly than before in what direction her duty lay. 
Our engagement must be considered off, at once and for 
ever. “ It is only right,” she wrote, “ and even if you, in 
your love or your pity — and I am sure of both — desired to 
continue it, nothing would prevail with me to agree.” There 
were words of tenderness, too, very hard to bear, and only 
to be read with half-blinded eyes. But the one deep impres- 
sion left by the letter was that of a poor human soul — a soul 
so dear to me — struggling under the domination of the drink 
crave. 


DRINK 


21 


“ Dear Robert, if you only knew (but God keep you 
from all such dreadful knowledge) how much I suffer when 
these periods approach, you would not, as I fear you may, 
pity me for my weakness or reproach me for not conquering 
it. Oh ! the terror of the time when I feel this craving 
come upon me! I give up all work, I write postponing all 
engagements, I excuse myself to everybody, I lock myself 
up from every eye. This is before it comes ; but when I know 
it is near, and when the dreadful thing falls upon me — oh! 
the pain, the shame, the horror ! Cheating myself, deceiving 
everybody about me, bribing the servants, and stealing in and 
out of my own house like a thief. Heaven save me from 
this fiend that takes hold of me and possesses me! But 
Heaven will not save me; I must end as my father ended. 
And, after all, I ought to be thankful that I have found my 
fate in time. If it had fallen on me after we had married, 
and, perhaps, after I had become a mother . . . but that is 
too painful to think of. Good-bye, dear Robert! Think of 
me as tenderly as you can. Though it is so hard to put away 
the thought of the happiness we dreamt of, it will be a 
comfort to me in my darkest hours to remember the joy you 
snatched for me out of my doomed and fated life.” 

Sir George was right — there was no help for it. I 
remembered my father, and went out to send him a telegram. 
At the telegraph-office in Fleet Street I wrote my message: 
“ Don’t come — marriage postponed — am writing.” I held the 
message a long time in my hand, and could not bring myself 
to hand it to the clerk. At length I tore it up and left the 
office. 

It was the same as if it had been Lucy’s death-warrant, 
and I could not deliver it. I could not give her up. I would 
not abandon hope of her. The thought of that beautiful 
young life being slowly encircled by a serpent that was 
to destroy it was too horrible. Some angel there must be in 
God’s good world to slay this demon, if one could only find 
it out. 

It was Saturday night, and the streets were thronged. I 
walked aimlessly along until I found myself in front of a 
place of popular entertainment, which had a gigantic placard 


22 


DRINK 


on the face of it. The placard announced that, at half-past 
ten that night, a certain “ Professor ” La Mothe, a hypnotist, 
would awaken a man who had been lying ten days in a trance. 
In sheer weariness of soul, and only with a desire for distrac- 
tion from painful thoughts, I went in to see. 

It was still an hour earlier than the time appointed 
for the experiment, but I found my way to the sleeper. He 
was kept in a small room apart, and lay in a casket, which 
at first sight suggested a coffin. There were raised plat- 
forms at either side, from which the spectator looked down 
at the man as into a grave. But nothing in his own appear- 
ance gave any hint of death. His face was composed and 
healthful ; his eyes were closed, his lips lightly pressed 
together, his breathing was noiseless, and his breast rose and 
fell with the gentlest motion. The sleep of a child was never 
more soft and sweet and peaceful. 

I was alone in the room and I could not leave it. Unless 
this exhibition were a palpable imposture here was a great 
and wondrous mystery — the power of producing sleep. It 
had wiped out ten days of this man’s life — ten days, perhaps 
of sorrow and pain. The world had gone by him and left 
no mark. His temptations, his troubles, his besetting sins, 
they had touched him not. 

“Oh ! sleep, it is a gentle thing, 

Beloved from pole to pole. 

To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 

She sent the gentle sleep from heaven 
That slid into my soul.” 

I sat on a chair on the platform and looked down at 
the sleeper. And as I looked it seemed at last that it was 
not a strange man’s face I was gazing into, but the beautiful 
face that was the dearest to me in all the world. Suddenly 
a thought struck me that made me quiver from head to foot. 
What if Lucy could sleep through the days of her awful 
temptation ? What if she could be put into a trance when the 
craving was coming upon her? Would she bridge over the 
time of the attack? Would she elude the fiend that was 


DRINK 


23 


pursuing her? Would she awake with the burning fever 
gone? 

The hour of the experiment arrived, and spectators came 
trooping into the room. They were chiefly fashionable young 
men with their women, and they chatted and laughed and 
smoked their cigars throughout the proceedings. The hypno- 
tist was a man of five-and-thirty, with prepossessing man- 
ners, a clear-cut face, and a heavy chin, but a smile like 
sunshine, and a voice that was at once sharp and caressing. 
He pressed the brows of the sleeper, opened his eyes and blew 
into them, then called to him, and he seemed to awake. In 
less than sixty seconds the man who, according to report, 
had lain ten days asleep, dead to himself and to all knowledge 
of life, had vaulted lightly out of the casket and was putting 
on his coat. 

I stepped down and spoke to him. “ Are you hungry ? ” 
I asked. 

“ No, sir,” he answered. 

“ Nor thirsty?” 

“ No.” 

“ You feel quite well ? 99 

“ Quite.” 

I followed the hypnotist into his retiring-room. “Mr. 
La Mothe,” I said, “has artificial sleep ever been used for 
the cure of intemperance?” 

He was a Parisian, and I had to repeat my question in 
French. “In the school of Nancy,” he said, “the cure of 
alcoholism by suggestion is not unknown.” 

“ That is more than I meant. You know the form of 
mania in which the crave is periodical ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

“ Do you think if a patient were put under artificial sleep 
when the period is approaching, and kept there as long as it 
is usual for it to last, the crave would be gone when the 
time came to awaken him ? ” 

I could see that the idea had never occurred to the hyp- 
notist before, and that it startled and fascinated him. “ With 
a proper subject it might be — I cannot say — I think it would 
— I should like to try.” 


24 


DRINK 


Before leaving him I had arranged everything. He was 
to hold himself in readiness to go with me to Cumberland 
at any moment that I might summon him on that errand. 

Is it too much to say that I went home that night with 
the swing and step of a man walking on the stars? If I 
had found a cure for the deadliest curse of humanity, if I 
had been about to wipe out the plague of all races, all nations, 
all climes, all ages, I could not have been more proud and 
confident. Hypnotism ! Animal magnetism ! Electrobiology ! 
Call it what you will. To me it had one name only — sleep. 
Sleep, the healer, the soother, the comforter — 

“Sleep that knits up the raveird sleave of care . . . 

Great Nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s 
feast — • ” 

And sleep was the good angel that was to snatch my 
dear one from the grasp of the deadliest fiend out of hell. 


CHAPTER FIVE. 

A LETTER came from the Scots minister. By the 
grace of God Lucy was better. Her ardent philan- 
thropy had begun again. She was organizing Bands 
of Hope among the children. The power of the Lord was 
strong above all other powers, and our dear victim was to 
be, saved. 

I was relieved, but I was also distressed. The pathos of 
Lucy’s repentance touched me deeply ; but if the world knew 
the truth, how it would shout itself hoarse at what it must 
call her hypocrisy! 

My time was not yet, but it came only too soon, only 
too surely. A fortnight later I heard from Mrs. Hill. Lucy 
was betraying symptoms of another attack. The twitching 
of her mouth, the restlessness of her hands, the keen and 
feverish look of her eyes, these were unmistakable indica- 
tions. 

“ They began,” said the nurse, “ after service last Sun- 
day morning. She took the communion ! Merciful Father ! 


DRINK 


25 


What am I saying? And yet it is the truth. .1 must not 
conceal it.” 

I had told Mrs. Hill that I had engaged a doctor who 
was a specialist in nervous ailments, and that I wished for 
due warning of the return of an attack. Her letter was 
intended to ask for the specialist, and I summoned La Mothe 
by a telegram. 

On the way to Euston I called on Sir George at his 
chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He heard of my errand 
without either approval or disapproval. His strong face was 
like a mask and gave no sign. As I was leaving his room 
he touched my arm and said, “ Have you telegraphed to 
your father ? ” 

I answered “ No,” and tried to hasten away. 

“ I must do so myself,” he said. 

“Give me a week more,” I pleaded. “There will still 
be time enough to stop him.” 

Sir George nodded his head and I left him. He had less 
than no faith in my errand. Only his pity for the deep 
entanglement of my affections suffered him to see me go on 
with my enterprise. 

Late the same night I reached Cumberland with La 
Mothe. We put up at the “ Wheatsheaf,” and I lost no time 
in sending a message to McPherson and to Godwin, announc- 
ing my arrival and asking them to oblige me with a call. The 
two men came together, and there was a strained and painful 
interview. I introduced the hypnotist and told of my inten- 
tion, saying I desired their countenance and assistance. 

The minister refused it promptly and absolutely. His 
attitude was precisely that which I might have foreseen. 
What I proposed to do, if I could do it, would be tampering 
with free will. His conscience was startled by such audacity. 
Drink was a temptation of the Devil, only to be conquered 
by the grace of God. The measures we proposed to employ 
were the instrument of the Evil One. To subjugate the free 
will of a fellow creature, to act upon her by “ suggestion,” 
to compel her to do that which she must, and not that which 
she would, was to attempt to uproot the moral law, to unseat 
religion, and shake our trust in God Himself. 


26 


DRINK 


It was in vain that I urged that it was no part of my 
present scheme to act upon Lucy by therapeutic suggestion, 
but that if I were driven to doing so as a last resource I 
should feel justified by the natural order of life. 

“ You talk,” I said, “ about conscience, about moral 
responsibility, about free will. To ninety-nine out of a 
hundred there is no such thing. Only the hundredth has a 
will that is free, and, for good or evil, he makes slaves of 
the wills of the ninety and nine. The orator swaying an 
assembly, the statesman directing affairs, the king controll- 
ing an empire, the pretty woman directing fashion, the 
young bride winning to her own way the husband who loves 
her — what are they all doing but imposing the free will 
on the will that is not free? Every great man is great in 
degree as he dictates the wills of other men, and he is the 
greatest man whom the greatest men are doomed to obey.” 

The Scots minister listened to me with a face of horror. 

“ Why call a man great,” he said, “ because he paralyses 
the souls of his fellow men? The basest and the worst of 
men do that, and it is by the power of the Devil that they 
do it. The murderer who lures his victim to a lonely place 
that he may fall on him and kill him, the Judas who worms 
himself into the secret of his master that he may betray and 
sell him, the unjust steward who seeks the care of the widow 
and fatherless that he may rob them of their bread, the 
seducer who palters with the love of a weak woman that he 
may dishonor her and then fling her in the mud — these are 
the men who try to control the actions of their fellow men, 
and they are the real Lucifers, for they are in rebellion 
against God on His real throne — the hearts of His creatures.” 

“In short, you mean,” I said, “that if I cause Miss 
Clousedale to be put under the hypnotic sleep, in the hope of 
conquering the drink crave which is destroying her, I shall 
be acting the part of her worst enemy ? ” 

“You will be attempting to break down the sanctuaries 
of her soul,” he answered, “ and pretending to a power that 
can only come of the grace of God itself.” 

I was losing my patience. “Nevertheless, I intend to 
try.” 


DRINK 


The minister flushed to the eves. “You shall not do 
so ! ” 

I set a firm lower lip and went on. “ She has no legal 
guardian, and I am shortly to be her husband. The moral 
right is mine, and I am going to exercise it.” 

“ Then, sir,” replied the Reverend McPherson, bringing 
his fist down on the table, “ I wash my hands of your proceed- 
ings ” ; and with that and a flash of anger he rose and left us. 

I had no better encouragement from the doctor. His 
steely eyes had glittered as with amused contempt during my 
encounter with the minister, and now he spoke with the easy 
superiority of a man who believes himself to be above all 
feeble superstitions. His theories were the modern ones, his 
methods the reverse of those who trust to moral suasion. 
The drink craving was a disease. The victims of it ought 
to be treated as diseased people, and kept under restraint 
until the madness had been overcome. 

The word stung me, and I suppose I cplored deeply, for 
he looked into my face and said, “ This is no time for mock 
modesty. It is a time to face the truth. For my own part, 
I have done so from the first. Regarding Miss Clousedale 
as a subject of temporary insanity, I have, as you are aware, 
treated her accordingly.” 

I bit my lip and asked, “With what results?” 

“ I am not entirely responsible for results,” he said. 
“ I am only responsible for the treatment. To attempt to 
cure the drink crave merely by the machinery of the temper- 
ance pledge is a course discredited in the eyes of scientific 
inquirers. In spite of the gigantic temperance organisation 
of the last fifty years, drunkenness the world over is not 
less, but more. Its consequences are more serious, its special 
cases more acute. As a whole, taken in its broadest aspects, 
the temperance cause has failed. So far I am at one with 
you: but ” 

I was shaking my head: he paid no heed to my dissent. 

“ — but the method with which you now propose to 
supersede the effete one of temperance people like this Scots 
minister is not only ineffectual, it is beset with terrors. You 
say you are going to put the young lady under hypnotic 


DRINK 


sleep. There is no such thing as hypnotic sleep. What there 
is in actual fact is a phenomenon produced by imagination. 5 ' 

“ Very well,” I said, “if you prefer to call it imagination, 
let us do so; and if imagination is a medicine, by all means 
let us use it.” 

“Not so quick,” he answered. “You have clearly not 
counted with the dangers. The phenomenon of imagination 
which you propose to induce is only a form of hysteria. We 
know what that involves. It involves the danger of madness 
-^-incurable madness, not temporary madness, such as the 
victim of drink suffers from. Thus you are trying to jump 
out of the frying-pan into the fire. Even if it is possible to 
put Miss Clousedale into a real sleep of three days’ duration — 
a thing I entirely disbelieve — you would only be reducing her 
by one form of hysteria — the quiescent form, the most 
dangerous form — to a condition which must imperil her life.” 

“ Do you mean,” I said, “ that she would never awake ? ” 

“ I mean,” he answered, “ that she would probably never 
awake to the consciousness of reason, or else that she would 
only awake to die.” 

“In short, you refuse to share our responsibility?” 

“ I am not so simple as to share it. What you say you 
are going to do amounts in effect, if you can do it, to the 
administration of chloroform. Now, a patient may die under 
chloroform; and when this occurs our defense is obvious. 
But you are using unrecognized means, and there is no way 
by which you can show that, such as they are, you are using 
them properly. If Miss Clousedale should die in your hands, 
what is your position in the eye of the law ? ” 

“ She will not die.” 

“But if, my friend — if — if?” 

“ If,” I answered, “ you know so little of what was first 
called hypnotism by one of your own faculty as to speak 
of its dangers in the same breath with those of chloroform, 
it is clear that we have nothing to gain by your co-operation, 
and nothing to lose by your withdrawal ” 

The hard face became harder, and the square brow 
more stern. 

“ So you ask me to withdraw — you, who have no legal 


DRINK 


29 


rights whatever — you ask me to step back in favor of God 
knows whom, from God knows where, coming with God 
knows what tricks of the adventurer and the charlatan?” 

“ I ask you to remember,” I replied, “ that your profes- 
sion has always used just such language as you are now 
using about everything and everybody that has done any 
great work in the interests of humanity.” 

He had risen and was making for the door. 

“ It is such men as you, and — and this person ” — pointing 
with his hat to the hypnotist — “who are the disturbers of 
society, making with a little burning straw and dirty smoke 
the scarecrow superstitions which fill the world with weakness 
and melancholy and insanity. I leave you to your silly work ; 
but I warn you that if you do what you say, and anything 
happens as the consequence, as sure as there is law in the 
land, I will set it in motion to punish you.” 

I bowed him out with cold politeness and he went off 
in anger. The hypnotist had sat through both interviews 
with no better apprehension of their drift than observation of 
our faces had afforded him. 

“Mr. La Mothe,” I said, in French, “the gentlemen 
wash their hands of us.” 

He smiled. I had not surprised him. 


CHAPTER SIX. 

E ARLY the next morning we went up to Clousedale 
Hall. I was not surprised to find that both doctor 
and clergyman were there before us. They had come, 
however, to watch, iiot to resist, and were moving about in 
the breakfast-room with grim and silent faces. Mrs. Hill 
was looking worn and wretched. 

“ You are none too soon,” she said in her low and 
nervous voice. Then she led the way upstairs. 

It is impossible to say what effect the sight of Lucy had 
upon me. She was sitting in a boudoir which had a bedroom 


3 ° 


DRINK 


opening out of it. The beautiful pale face was now flushed 
and heated, the big blue eyes were keen and restless, there 
was something feverish and electrical in her manner ; and her 
glossy chestnut hair, almost as dull as tow, was partly drag- 
gling over her shoulders. When she saw me she tried to escape, 
but I intercepted her at the bedroom door and did what I 
could to overcome the torment of her humiliation. She fell 
upon my neck, buried her face in my breast, and burst into 
tears. As well as I was able for the sobs that choked me, 
I tried to soothe and comfort her. 

“You will soon be well again, dearest. Have no fear. 
I have brought a French specialist to see you, and you must 
do all that he asks and expects/’ 

Then the hypnotist entered, and close behind came the 
doctor and the minister. 

Lucy held my hand during the first examination, and she 
seemed fairly quiet and tractable. But when an attempt 
was made to put her to sleep by causing her to fix her gaze 
for a few moments on some luminous object, she realized 
the intention instantly, and broke into a fit of hysteria. It 
was agony to listen to her cries and to see the convulsive 
twitching of her features. The hypnotist called for brandy, 
and offered her a small dose of it. She clutched at the glass 
with feverish eagerness. Her eyes at that moment were like 
balls of fire in the darkness. Their wild gloating was terrible 
to look upon. 

It was true enough that we had not come too soon. The 
attack was imminent. We must act now or not at all. 

“ Hypnogenic agencies,” said La Mothe, “ are difficult 
in a case like this, so we must needs try the mesmeric ones.” 

Without quite realizing the difference, I consented to 
this change in the experiment, and then everybody except 
myself was ordered out of the room. Shall I ever forget 
what occurred? The scene that followed has left scars on 
my memory. It is with pain like that of tearing the bandage 
from a wound that I try now to recall it. 

The magnetiser put my dear one to sit on a chair in 
the middle of the floor, and seated himself on another chair 
drawn up directly in front. Then, sitting face to face with 


DRINK 


3i 


her, he proceeded to make passes before her, and at length 
to apply his left hand on her breast in downward movements 
to what I now know as the hypnogenic zones. After that he 
reached over and passed his right hand across her shoulder 
and behind her body. Their foreheads touched. Lucy made 
a low, indistinguishable cry, and half turned to me with 
a movement either of appeal or of reproach. 

The operation went on. Slowly, very slowly, with a 
calm that began to grow hateful, the magnetiser continued 
the downward pressure. Lucy’s hysteria seemed to subside at 
every stroke of his hand. After a time her face, which had 
grown pale with fear, was inflamed as with pleasure, her 
eyes brightened and became humid, their pupils dilated and 
their gaze became transfixed, ^he dropped her head, covered 
her face, and sighed audibly. I wanted to put a stop to 
everything, but did not know why I should do so. 

The operation continued. Lucy’s eyes grew dimmer, 
their vision seemed to be obscured, her breathing became 
short and difficult, as if she were beginning to suffer from 
an attack of nervous suffocation. 

“The room is going round and round,” she said in a 
thick, low voice, and again in a half articulate murmur, “ It 
is going faster and faster.” 

“ All right,” said La Mothe, turning to me for a moment, 
and my impulse to intervene was checked. 

Then my darling’s body began to be agitated by sudden 
jerky movements. This was followed by languor and prostra- 
tion. Finally, as the man reached across to her again she 
fell forward in his arms, swayed a moment, dropped her head 
over his shoulders, with eyes closed and neck extended, and 
with a sigh she lost consciousness. 

“ All right,” said La Mothe again, but his tone of satis- 
faction revolted me. I wanted to lay hold of him by the 
throat and fling him out of the house. I knew now what 
the sensation of horror was which down to that moment 
had been vague. It was horror of the power that one human 
creature can by the mysterious processes of Nature wield 
over another, putting the soul to sleep and to death— for a 
time, at all events. 


32 


DRINK 


“ Let me take her to her room,” said La Mothe. 

“ Out of the way there ! ” I cried, and plucking my dear 
one from his arms I carried her into her bedroom, and laid 
her upon the bed. 

I was leaning over her, kissing her marble forehead, 
that was wet with my tears, when I became conscious that 
Godwin and McPherson were standing behind me. 

“ The intense excitement has produced catalepsy,” said 
the doctor, and then after a moment he added, “She has 
merely fainted.” 

I repeated the words in French, and La Mothe smiled, 
shook his head, and answered, “ No.” 

“ Don’t you see she has merely fainted ?” said the doctor. 

I repeated these words also, and the hypnotist replied, 
“ Do people speak when they have fainted ? ” 

“ Of course not,” said the doctor. 

“ Speak to her,” said the hypnotist to me. 

I leaned over the bed again, and, looking down at the 
closed eyelids, cried in a loud tone, “ Lucy ! ” 

“ Don’t shout,” said the hypnotist. “ Her hearing is not 
duller. It is intensified. She hears all we are saying, as 
well as the ticking of our watches and the beating of our 
hearts.” 

In a breaking voice that was all but a whisper I spoke 
again. 

“Lucy!” 

The sweet lips, so softly closed, opened gently, and the 
voice of my dear one came like the voice of one who speaks 
as she is sinking into a sleep. 

“ Yes.” 

“Are you in pain?” 

“Oh, no.” 

“ Do you know who I am?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Do you wish me to hold your hand?” 

“Oh, yes.” 

I lifted from the counterpane the thin, motionless fingers 
and enclosed them in my moist and swelling palms. 


DRINK 


33 


“ Are you happy now, dearest ? ” 

“ Quite happy.” 

The doctor and the minister listened and looked on. 

“ She is exhausted, that’s all,” said Godwin, speaking in 
French. 

“ Do you mean that she is not asleep ? ” said the hypno- 
tist. 

“ Certainly I do.” 

“Then arouse her. Make her sit up and talk to us in 
the common way of life.” 

The doctor accepted the challenge promptly. He raised 
Lucy in his arms and spoke to her, but she dropped back 
as one without bodily power. 

“ Raise her eyelids. Look at the pupils,” said the hyp- 
notist. 

The doctor did so. “ She is asleep,” he muttered. 

“ But only in the somnambulistic phase,” said the hypno- 
tist. 

Then he touched her eyebrows and her temples with a 
hard downward pressure; her breathing became slower and 
less audible, her face settled to a serene expression, and a 
faint tinge of color rose to her cheeks. 

“ She is now in the deeper phase — she is in a trance,” 
said the hypnotist. 

“You mean that she is unconscious?” said the doctor. 

“ Quite unconscious.” 

“ Lucy ! ” I cried again over the placid face, but there 
came no answer. 

“ Lucy ! Lucy ! ” 

There was not the quiver of an eyelid, not the shadow 
of movement on the lips. She was gone— gone to the great 
world of silence where the soul lives apart. 

But I felt no fear now, no self-reproach, no misgiving. 
It was impossible to look into that silent face and be afraid. 
Never had my dear one seemed to me so softly beautiful, so 
like a happy sleeping child, so like an angel still on earth 
and yet cut off from the jar and fret of life. Her bosom 
rose and fell with the gentlest motion. I had to listen hard 


34 


DRINK 


to catch the sound of her slow breathing. Her heart beat 
regularly. She was at peace. 

“Oh 1 sleep, it is a gentle thing, 

Beloved from pole to pole.” 

Would this experiment succeed? When my darling 
awoke from this sleep of the soul, would the burning thirst 
of the flesh be gone? 

“ How long does the craving usually last ?” said the 
hypnotist. 

“Three days,” answered Mrs. Hill (through me), rising 
from a chair at the back, where sh& had been sitting with 
covered face. 

“Three! This is Wednesday. Thursday — Friday — 
Saturday — we’ll waken her on Sunday morning. Meantime 
I will stay in the house, and if, as is probable, she should 
recover from the influence in the morning, I will put her 
under hypnosis again.” 


CHAPTER SEVEN. 

I LEFT the hypnotist at Clousedale Hall and went back to 
the “ Wheatsheaf.” Not until then did I realize what the 
tension had been, and what it still must be. How I passed 
the four nights and days ensuing I do not know. One creep- 
ing terror dominated every sleeping and waking hour — that 
Lucy would never come out of the trance in which our mys- 
terious forces had laid her. I went up to the house constantly, 
and as often as I approached it I glanced nervously from the 
farthest point of sight to assure myself that the blinds had 
not been drawn down. I crept upstairs on tiptoe, and stole 
along the corridors like a thief. I know that, short as the 
time of waiting was, measured in relation to life, I wasted 
away in it and grew pale and haggard. It ought to have 
reassured me that all this time the hypnotist did not turn 
a hair. A smug content shone on his face as often as I looked 
at it with fearful eyes. Lucy’s condition continued good. 
Her pulse was regular and her heart normal. She took 


DRINK 


35 


nourishment in sustaining quantities by the means they had 
of passing it through her almost motionless lips. 

I had no thought to waste on the people of Cleator, but 
it was impossible not to know that in some way public opinion 
was against me. Even Mrs. Tyson, the landlady, at first so 
friendly a soul, was clearly looking at me askance. Suspicion, 
which I had feared might settle on Lucy, was resting on 
myself instead. 

But I lived through everything, and even Saturday night 
came at length. It was the night before the morning 
appointed for Lucy’s awakening, and I did not attempt to 
sleep. When I ought to have gone to bed I wandered out 
into the locality of the mines, and at early morning I found 
myself, like a lost soul, encircling the smelting-house of 
“ Owd Boney.” The bank fires burning the refuse of iron 
ore sent a red glow into the world of darkness. Mountains 
and dale were blotted out ; nothing was visible but the tongues 
of flame leaping from the squat mouths of the chimneys, 
and nothing was audible but the deep panting of the labor- 
ing engine that brought the iron out of the bowels of the 
earth. In my mood at that time it seemed a fit scene for 
the mysterious and awful rites which were being enacted in 
the big house behind the trees, with my love as the silent 
and unconscious subject. 

The morning dawned very fresh and bright and beautiful. 
The sun shone and the birds sang, and there was no cloud 
or wind. As early as I dared I went up to the house. The 
doctor and the Scots minister arrived soon after me. I 
could not help seeing in their grim sallo\yness a certain 
satisfaction at my nervousness and pallor. It was almost 
as if they hoped for a tragic issue, or at least foresaw a 
ghastly triumph over me if things should not go well. 

La Mothe joined us after a period of waiting. He 
looked cheerful and spoke cheerily. There was an irritating 
atmosphere of every-dayness about the man’s manner. He 
had been sleeping and had just awakened. I think he yawned 
as he bade us “Good-morning !” 

In due course we all four passed into the bedroom. 
That peaceful place was full of a holy calm. Lucy lay there 


36 


DRINK 


as I had last seen her, with the tranquil face of a sleeping 
angel. I thought I had never seen a human countenance so 
saintly. Not a line of evil passion, not a trace of that 
spiritual alloy which the touch of the world brings to the 
soul that is fresh from God. The air around her seemed to 
breathe of heaven. 

“ Is everything ready, nurse ? ” said the hypnotist. 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Hill, again through me. 

“ Bring up that small table and set it near to the bed.” 

This was done. 

“ Now set a wine-glass on the table, with the decanter 
of brandy.” 

This was done also. The time for the awakening was 
at hand. There was no sound in the room except the 
chirping of the cheerful fire, the singing of the birds out- 
side, the shuffling of the feet and the rasping of the breath 
of the hypnotist. The rest of us were very quiet. Our 
very hearts seemed to stand still. 

I must have lived a lifetime during the next two min- 
utes. The tension was terrible. No physical agony can com- 
pare with the agony of suspense like that. 

The hypnotist approached my darling, and, putting his 
fingers lightly on her- forehead, raised her eyelids with his 
thumbs. Her pupils were turned up — I could not look at her, 
I could not look away. 

At the next moment the hypnotist was leaning closely 
over her, with his face close to her face, blowing softly into 
her eyes. 

There was a measureless period of suspense. Lucy lay 
without a sign of life. 

The hypnotist was holding the eyelids wide open, and 
blowing strongly on to the pupils. The pupils were moving 
— they were coming down. 

Then, close to the silent face, very close, the hypnotist 
began to speak. In a loud, deep voice, caressing and yet 
commanding, he cried, “ You’re all right ! ” 

Lucy’s eyelids twitched under his fingers, but there was 
no other response. 


DRINK 


37 


“ You’re all right ! ” cried the hypnotist, as one casing 
into a deep cavern. 

“ All right ! All right ! ” 

The voice seemed to be dragging back the reluctant 

soul. 

The sleeper moved. There was a clutching of the 
counterpane, a swelling of the bosom, a deep, audible breath- 
ing, and then the whole body rolled over on its side, as a 
child does when it is awakening in the morning from the 
long, unbroken sleep of the night. 

I had begun to breathe freely again under the mingled 
feelings of relief and joy. 

“ Speak to her,” said the hypnotist. 

I tried, but could not ; then tried again, and uttered a 
husky gurgle. 

“ Have no fear. She is quite safe. In two minutes more 
she will be awake and well. Speak to her. Let your voice 
be the first that she hears on returning to consciousness and 
to the world. Recall some incident of the past — the more 
tender the better. We will leave you. ” 

He motioned the doctor and the minister to go out with 
him, and they passed into the boudoir together. I reached 
over to my dear one and took her hand and kissed her and 
then in a whisper I called her by her name. 

“ Lucy ! ” 

There was a moment’s silence, as if the soul of the 
sleeping were listening, and then in a toneless, somnambulis- 
tic voice she answered — 

“ Yes.” 

“ Do you remember the day we parted in London ? ” 

There was another pause, and then came a flood of 
words. 

“ What a lovely sunset ! See how sweetly the red glow 
stretches down the river ! How beautiful the world is ! 
And how good ! ” 

I remembered the words. I had heard her speak them 
before. She was living over again the incidents of our last 
evening at Sir George Chute’s. 

“What a long, long time it must be before we meet 


33 


DRINK 


again ! Christmas ! Will it ever come ? I shall count the 
days like the prisoner of Chillon.” 

I remembered how I had answered her when she said 
this before, and in the same way I answered her again. 

“ Let us hope that, like him, you will not become too 
fond of your prison to leave it for good when I come in 
the spring to fetch you.” 

There was a little trill of laughter, like the ghostly echo 
of the merry note which had danced in my ears on that 
June night when we sat on the balcony looking down at 
the sleeping Thames. 

“ They are lighting the lamps in the drawing-room. 
Would you like me to sing something ? ” 

In another moment my darling was singing from her 
bed in the breaking sleep of her spirit, just as she had 
sung to me at that happy parting seven months before — 

“ And when my seven long years are gone ” 

Suddenly the voice broke and then frayed away, and 
the song stopped. Lucy moved and opened her eyes. I 
was face to face with her, and she looked on me with a be- 
wildered gaze. Then the light of love came into her eyes, 
and in an ardent, penetrating, passionate tone she cried, 
“ Robert ! ” and reached out her arm to me. 

“ I was dreaming of you,” she said. “ I thought we 
were together in London and I was singing.” 

“ And so you were, my love,” I answered, as well as I 
was able for the sobs that choked me. 

Then she raised herself on her elbow and realized where 
we were. 

“ I remember — you brought the French doctor early 
this morning. What time is it now ? ” 

I made what shift I could to answer her question, and 
little by little everything came back. Her distress was more 
than I could bear to witness, and I crept away. 

Yet before I left the room I realized that the hypnotist, 
who had come to the little table, was pouring brandy from 
the decanter into the glass. 


DRINK 


39 


“ Offer her this/’ he said in his own language to the 
nurse, who had been hovering about the bedhead. 

But Lucy only glanced at the glass, and then, with a 
look of repulsion and a voice of pain, she cried — 

“ No, no ! Take it way. It makes me sick/’ 

In the agony of my suspense I had forgotten our mis- 
sion. We had succeeded. The drink craving was gone. 


CHAPTER EIGHT. 

L A MOTHE was enraptured with his success. 

“We have taken only one step yet/’ he said. 
“We have staved off a single attack. But we must put 
the lady under the hypnotic sleep again and again, until the 
chain of the periodic craving is broken. And if that will 
not suffice to cure her, we must have recourse to therapeutic 
suggestion. While she is under influence we must impress 
it upon her that drink is a sickening poison which she ought 
never to touch.” 

But I could not nerve myself to go on. To allow Lucy 
to slip back again and again to the world of silence and 
darkness was more than I dared think of. Then my feeling of 
repulsion against the occult powers, and against the means 
of using them, was now stronger than ever, notwithstanding 
the good results. And I began to foresee a new and hideous 
danger. 

“ Dr. La Mothe,” I said, “ has it been your experience 
that a subject is easier to magnetize at a second than at the 
first attempt, and easier still at a third, and that the difficulty 
grows less and less at each successive effort ? ” 

“ Certainly,” said La Mothe, with eagerness ; “We 
should have no such scene again as we went through on 
Wednesday morning.” 

“And has it been your experience, also, that the sub- 
jects of the magnetizer become more and more attached to 
him, as though drawn and held by the fascination of his 
own personality ? ” 


40 


DRINK 


“That was Mesmer’s chief difficulty,” said La Mothe. 
“ It is told of his subjects that they were constantly follow- 
ing him about the house with the eyes of devoted dogs.” 

“ Ah ! ” 

It must be just as I foresaw. When I thought of the 
scene of the magnetizing, the prospect of a fascination based 
on such forces as were there brought into play terrified and 
revolted me. La Mothe seemed to guess at the nature of my 
objection, for he began to argue the claims of hypnotism as 
distinguished from those of mesmerism. 

“ In hypnotism,” he said, “ the operator’s personality is 
not an active force. Your English doctor, Braid, saw this 
clearly, at a moment when the very mention of mesmerism 
would have deprived him of his practice and ruined him 
for life. Hypnotism requires no commerce between the 
body of the operator and the body of the subject.” 

“ But it requires instead,” I urged, “ the acquiescence 
of the subject’s will.” 

“In the first instance, certainly,” said La Mothe. 

“ Only in the first instance ? ” 

“ Well, the first few instances.” 

“That is to say,” I said, “that the subject who has once 
or twice or thrice submitted her will to the will of the 
hypnotist slackens her hold of it little by little.” 

“ I think that may be allowed.” 

“And in the long run, if the experiment were carried 
so far, there might come the complete subjugation of the 
will of the subject and the complete domination of the will 
of the operator.” 

“ Opinions among authorities,” said La Mothe, " are 
divided on that point. The schools of Salpetriere and of 
Nancy part company on the question (among others) of 
whether the free will remains unbroken or the hypnotized 
subject is a mere automaton.” 

“ But what is your own opinion ? ” 

“My own opinion is that the will of the subject does 
in the long run, and after many operations, assimilate itself 
to the will of the operator.” 


DRINK 


41 


“ That means,” I said, “ that if the operator is a good 
man the influence he exercises will be for good.” 

“ Most certainly,” said La Mothe. 

I did not urge the opposing fact, that if the operator is 
an evil man his influence must be for evil. My mind was 
already made up. Whatever La Mothe might be, if the 
powers he exercised were what he described, the risk that 
Lucy would run in being made subject to them was so fear- 
ful that no gain seemed great enough to justify the change. 
The remedy would be worse than the disease. On the one 
side was the drink craving, with its blasting curse; on the 
other side either the moral danger of a power which no man 
should wield over any woman, or else the malign domina- 
tion of the very soul itself. 

I had had enough of hypnotism and mesmerism. They 
might offer a means of cure for Lucy, but I could not bear to 
think of them. They revolted me. I paid La Mothe his 
fee, and with a shrug and a sneer he went back to London. 
When he was gone I asked myself where I stood. No 
nearer the end which I had set out to reach. One spasm 
of the drink craving I had postponed or passed over. But 
another would come soon, and perhaps it would come with 
redoubled force. 


CHAPTER NINE. 

1 STAYED a fortnight longer in Cumberland. It was a 
tender, pathetic time. Lucy’s health grew better every 
day, yet her spirits did not improve. There was a look of 
trouble in her face, and sometimes her eyes would fill when 
the talk was cheerful and I was doing my best to be very 
merry. I noticed that the visits of the Scots minister were 
frequent. Lucy and McPherson were much in each other’s 
company. I did not intrude upon their conversation, thinking 
it might refer to the good works on which they were engaged 
together. But one day I saw them part with undisguised anger 
on his side and some confusion upon hers, and then I knew 
that his visits had involved a more serious and personal 


42 


DRINK 


issue. Lucy told me what it was. It concerned myself so 
closely. With eyes on the needlework that was in her trem- 
bling* fingers she let slip the truth. 

“ Robert.” she said, “ don’t think too hard of me.” 

“ What is it,” I said. 

“ Try to forgive me if I have given you so much trouble, 
so much pain ” 

I saw it coming. 

“ Tell me — what is it, Lucy ? ” 

“ I want to go into a Sisterhood.” 

“ Good God ! ” I cried, “ can you mean it ? ” 

“ I have thought it over very carefully,” she said. 
“ There is nothing else left for me to do. It is my only hope, 
my only refuge. If I am ever to conquer this curse, it can 
only be there. And if I am not to conquer it, where else can 
I hide myself so well ? Besides, I feel that it is right and 
just. I know all about my grandfather and how he made 
our money. That needs an expiation, and we know what is 
written about the third and fourth generation. But I am 
very sorry for your sake, Robert. It was very sweet and 
beautiful — all we hoped and expected — but then — but 
then ” 

Her cheeks were becoming red, her eyes moist, and her 
voice husky. 

“ Lucy, my darling,” I said, “ you are not very well yet. 
By and by you will be better, and then everything will seem 
different. All the world will be changed, and you will won- 
der how you could ever have made this resolution. Let 
us not think of it any more now, that’s a good girl.” 

My reason was more selfish than I had allowed. It 
was impossible for me to discuss with this sweet and tender 
creature an infirmity so ugly and so abject. I was asking 
myself what it was that had led to her determination, and 
telling myself that imagination was the most potent factor 
in life. Lucy wanted to go into a Sisterhood because the 
idea of an hereditary curse had taken possession of her im- 
agination. What was the drink craving in her case ? What 
must it be in nearly all cases ? It was the idea that drink 
controlled the will. The drunkard drinks because he thinks 


DRINK 


43 


he cannot help it. Drink is the hypnotist, and every time 
the victim yields to its sway its influence becomes more 
powerful. The first of its attempts upon Lucy was the 
moment when she first tasted, for then the bulwark of her 
will was broken down. Imagination may bring to pass the 
thing it fears, and Lucy’s imagination, dominated by the 
thought of a curse inherited from her grandfather, was 
working out the results which the curse predicted. 

On the other hand, was there no poison in her blood ? 
No organic mischief set up by two generations of alcoholism ? 
The eagerness with which she had clutched at the brandy 
immediately before her trance, and the repulsion she had 
shown at the sight, of it when she awoke, seemed to point 
to some absolute bodily predisposition quite independent of 
imagination. 

But the only standing ground I could find anywhere was 
that, if an imaginative idea had been the beginning of 
Lucy’s disease, another and healthier imaginative idea 
might perhaps be her medicine. What was therapeutic sug- 
gestion but imagination working on imagination? The sleep 
was no part of the primary thing, but only necessary for 
that subjugation of the opposing will wherein the imagina- 
tion of the operator might have free play with the imagina- 
tion of the subject. Then why not the imagination without 
the sleep ? Why not my imagination against that of Lucy ? 
And where was the imaginative idea with which I could 
overcome her belief in the curse ? There lay her salvation, 
if only I could find it. . 


CHAPTER TEN. 

O N my way to London I picked up the evening papers 
at Rugby. They were full of my quondam acquaint- 
ance, La Mothe. He had made a sensation by im- 
provising a sort of private hospital for the cure of inebriates. 
The Society for Psychical Research had investigated certain 
of his cases, and their report was favorable. His success 
was already very great. In a country house a few miles 


44 


DRINK 


out of London he was at full swing. The patients were 
chiefly ladies. 

Late that night I was sitting alone in my chambers, 
thinking of all that had happened so strangely, when I- heard 
footsteps on the pavement below and voices approaching 
my own building. 

“This is Pump Court, sir, and this is number five.” 
It was the porter from the lodge outside. 

“ Thank you, thank you,” was the answer in a cheery 
tone, which came to me as a ghost of some old memory. 

Then there was a heavy and uncertain step on the naked 
wooden stairs. I knew that the stranger was coming to 
me, and before he had knocked at my door I had got up to 
open it. At the next moment my father and I stood face 
to face. 

“ Does Mr. Har — ” he began, and then, looking into 
my face, he cried “ Robert ! ” and laid hold of me by both 
hands. 

I had not seen him for nearly fifteen years. His hair 
had become white and he was now an elderly man. But if 
the change in my father was great, the change in me must 
have been still greater. 

“ Let me look at you, my boy,” he said, and without 
releasing my hands he drew me to the lamp, held me at 
arms’ length, threw back his head, and scanned me from 
head to foot. I remember that I laughed during this scrutiny, 
and bore it with that indulgence which in a son comes so 
near to condescension. 

My father was much affected, but he did all he could 
to conceal his emotion under a boisterous manner. 

“ So I’ve taken you by surprise, eh ? Come earlier 
than I was expected, have I ? Well, I thought I would take 
you on the hop, young fellow. Here I am, at all events, 
straight away from Charing Cross, and all my luggage in 
the hands of the Customs. Couldn't wait for the examina- 
tion, you see. And now you’ve just got to put me up, for 
I’m not going to budge out of these rooms to-night ! ” 

Thus he laughed and rattled on, telling me of his jour- 
ney, his vacation, the time of his return, and interrupting 


DRINK 


45 


every other sentence with exclamations on the change in 
myself which had transformed me from boy to man. By and 
by he stopped in the torrent of his talk, looked round at a 
photograph of Lucy which stood on the mantel-piece, blinked 
at it, picked it up, and said — 

“ This ? ” 

I nodded my head, and he settled his glasses and gazed 
into the face of the photograph with a long and earnest gaze. 

“ Well,” I asked. 

“She’s beautiful !” he answered. “ Beautiful! ” he said 
again, with a long, warm utterance of the word; and, after 
a moment, “She’s a good woman,” he said tenderly. 

We sat late, and talked on every subject except one 
subject, and that was the subject nearest to my heart. Of 
Lucy’s illness I could tell my father nothing, and I occupied 
myself at every pause in devising subterfuges by which I 
could prevent Sir George Chute from telling him. Some- 
where in the early hours of morning my father unwittingly 
struck at an angle the thought that was dominant in my 
mind. He was talking of my mother, of whom I had no 
memories, for she had died in my childhood. 

“ Poor, dear mother ! She had strange fancies,” he 
said. “ The last of them came just before her death. It 
was an odd thought, and of course a harmless one, but I 
really believe it brightened and cheered the sweet soul at 
the dark hour of the end.” 

“ What was it ? ” I asked. 

“ You’ll laugh. It was nothing — nothing a man could 
ever mention except to his son. In fact, it was about your 
son.” 

“ Mine ? ” 

“Yes. You were only a child then, but she thought she 
saw you as you might be at seventy, and with a son of your 
own by your side.” 

“ Well ? ” 

“ You were a judge yourself, and your son — well, your 
son was being made Lord Chancellor of England ! ” 

I laughed; we both laughed; and then we sighed and 
were silent. My father was thinking of my mother; I was 


46 


DRINK 


thinking of Lucy. Here was an idea, a dream, a fancy, a 
madness exactly the opposite in nature and effect of that 
which had clouded the life of my dear girl. Just as the 
curse that had taken possession of the mind of Lucy’s 
grandfather had overshadowed his life, and carried its dark- 
ness onwards to the lives of his son and his granddaughter, 
so had the blessing that had germinated in the weakness, 
perhaps, of my mother’s failing mind brightened the end of 
her days and brought some after-glow, some shadow as of 
sunset, flame into my own existence ! Now, if I could 
oppose the one superstition against the other"! If I could 
only believe what my mother had believed, as Lucy believed 
what her grandfather had believed ! If imagination could 
bring about the fate it feared, why could it not also bring 
about the fortune for which it hoped ? 

My father slept that night in my bed, and I made shift 
with the couch in my study. The sound of his measured 
breathing came to me through the door between during the 
long hours in which I lay awake. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN. 

F ULL of a new thought, I was eager to get back to 
Cumberland, and ten or twelve days after my father’s 
arrival in England I parted from him with certain 
obvious excuses and took train for Cleator. 

“ Don’t be too long sending me that telegram, and I’ll 
be after you like quicksticks,” said he at Euston. 

Sir George Chute was with him, and I had sworn our 
old friend to silence. 

“ Good-bye,” said he loudly ; and then, putting his head 
in at the carriage window, “do nothing rash,” he said in 
significant tones. 

# I nodded my head for reassurance and assent, and the 
train started on its way. It was the same night mail as I 
had travelled with on the occasion of my first journey. Again 
I changed at Penrith, and changed a second time at the little 
junction in the mountains. It was now several weeks later. 


DRINK 


47 


and early spring had begun to breathe over the widening year. 
The morning was still very young, but the day had dawned, 
and over the hills to the east were the first pink rays from 
the unrisen sun. In the waiting-room of the little wooden 
station-house I found the same group of miners, smoking 
their clay pipes over the crackling sticks of a newly kindled 
fire. They remembered me, and with easy good manners 
recalled the name Lucy. It was common talk by this time 
that she intended to go into a kind of Anglican convent. 

“ We alius knew it would come to that/’ said one. “She’s 
a vast ower good for the world, is Lucy Clous’al.” 

It w^s Sunday morning, and I was at breakfast in the 
“ Wheatsheaf ” when the bells began to ring. I thought 
it probable that Lucy would be at church, and I was not 
disappointed. From my seat at the back I saw her in the 
pew under the pulpit, which had been empty on my former 
visit and decorated with ivy and holly and flowering gorse. 
She was dressed in a black that was almost like crape, and 
it made her pale face still more pale and spiritual. I do 
not think she saw me. With head bent she knelt through a 
great part of the service, and when it was over I did not 
attempt to speak to her. Some secret voice seemed to tell 
me that it should not be there, it should not be then, that 
I should launch upon her what I had come to say. From 
a few paces back I saw her pass out with reverent step, and 
my whole heart yearned for her, but I let her go. 

Next day — Monday — with the sun shining, the birds 
singing, the butterflies tossing in the air, and all the world 
turning to love and song, I went up to Clousedale Hall and 
asked for Mrs. Hill. The faithful old servant had a nervous 
and wornout look, as of sleepless hours and bitter sorrow. 
I asked if I might see Lucy. 

“ Youdale, from the mines, is with her now,” she said ; 
“ and I know that Cockbain, the solicitor, is to come again 
in the afternoon.” 

Her wrinkled face quivered as she used these names, 
for she saw that I recognized their significance as indicating 
preparations towards that change in life which was meant 
to be so near. 


4 8 


DRINK 


“ Then I’ll invite myself to dinner — you dine at six ? ” 
I said; and with that I shook the trembling hand again. I 
thought there was a kind of half despairing appeal expressed 
in the good old face as it looked into mine at the door, but 
nothing was said, and I passed out of the house. 

We were quiet and almost constrained that night at 
dinner. Lucy spoke very little, but she looked at me from 
lime to time. She seemed to be saying farewell to me with 
her eyes. 

I did what I could to be calm, and even to talk cheer- 
fully, but my whole heart was in rebellion. As I glanced 
across the table at my dear one, with her pale face and 
large, liquid eyes, I was seeing her in a nun’s dress, living 
within chill and sunless walls amid clouds of incense. I 
was seeing myself, too, going through the world as a home- 
less straggler. To have stretched out hands for the golden 
wine of life and been so near to quaffing it when the cup 
was dashed from our lips seemed cruel and monstrous. It 
was as much as I could do to keep up the flow of conversa- 
tion without painful pauses, and when Mrs. Hill rose and 
left us, giving me another look of supplication as she passed 
out, my impatience could support itself no longer. 

“ So you are going away, Lucy ? ” I said. 

“ Yes,” she answered, in a faint voice. 
u You are going into the Sisterhood ? ” I said. 

“ I have made all preparations,” she said ; and she in- 
dicated some of them. 

“ And are we to part like this, Lucy ? ” 

“ It is better so,” she said. “ And I thank God that 
I saw what it was right to do before it was too late to do it ! ” 
“ You are thinking of me ? ” I said. 

“How can I help it ?” she answered. “When I re- 
member that you are now at the beginning of life, and how 
nearly, though unwittingly, I had wrecked everything, not 

only for yourself, but perhaps for your children ” 

“ You still think you are under the curse ? ” I said. 

“ How can I think otherwise ? ” she replied. “ Remem- 
ber my grandfather and my father, and think of myself. 
Then your own experiment seemed to prove it.” 


DRINK 


49 


“But have you not reflected/’ I said, “that the power 
of such an idea is only in proportion to the belief in it ? That 
is the true psychology of a curse always. When you see a 
man, or a family, or even a nation, laboring like blind 
Samson against what seems like fate, if you look closely, 
you will find that the only fact is the fancy. That is your 
own case, Lucy. There is nothing really amiss with you. 
You have only to deny belief to the idea that killed your 
grandfather and your father, and all will be well.” 

She remained unshaken. “ It is impossible,” she said. 
“At all events, I dare not trust myself.” 

I came to closer quarters. “ And what about me?” I 
asked. 

“You ? ” she answered in a faltering voice ; “ you are 
to forget me.” 

“ Forget you, Lucy ? ” 

“ No, not that, either,” she said. “ I cannot wish you 
to forget me. I shall always remember your goodness, 
Robert, and — and I wish you to think of me as — as one who 
is lost to you in death.” 

“ But it is not death, Lucy — that’s the cruelty of it. It 
has none of the peace of death, and I cannot reconcile my- 
self to it.” She could not answer me, and I saw that her 
bosom was heaving. 

“ Lucy,” I said, “ have you nothing more to say to 
me ? ” 

“ Nothing,” she answered in a breaking voice. “Yet 
wait ! Yes, I have something to say.” 

“ What is it ?” 

“ I thought I had already gone through our last hour 
of parting.” 

“ When ? ” 

“ When you were in London and I was here alone.” 

It was very hard to go on. “ Well ? ” I asked. 

“I had hoped you would not come again, Robert; but 
since you have come, there is one thing you can do-— you have 
not done it yet.” 

“ Tell me what it is, Lucy.” 


50 


DRINK 


“ Release me from our engagement. Do it for my sake. 
It is my last request. Will you ? ” 

“ I will.” 

There was a little gasp, as of surprise, at the swift 
declaration, and then a low, slow reply — 

“ You are very good, Robert.” 

“ But I have something to say, Lucy.” 

“ Yes ? ” 

I passed over to the other side of the table and leaned 
on the back of the chair beside her. 

“ Lucy,” I said, “ you are living under the influence of 
an idea which takes the form of fate itself. It follows you 
and clouds your whole existence. Now, I am living under 
the influence of an idea also.” 

She shuddered and said, “Is it a curse ? ” 

“ No, but a blessing,” I replied. And then I told her 
of my mother’s dream, my mother’s fancy, my mother’s dy- 
ing hope. A hush fell on the room as I spoke, and I could 
see that my dear one was deeply touched. 

“ That is very, very beautiful,” she said in a hushed 
whisper ; and then, with a quick glance, “ but do you believe 
it ?” 

I summoned all my resolution, and replied bravely, 
“ With all my heart.” 

“You believe that in the fulness of time it will come 
to pass ? ” 

“ I do.” 

Her eyes began to glisten, and she said, not without 
an effort, “ That must be a great, great source of strength 
to you, Robert — to think that you will marry and be happy 
and have children, and that they will do well in the world 
some day ” 

She was breaking down. I had ploughed deeply, and 
torn at the tenderest fibres. 

“And believing that, Lucy,” I said, “trusting in that, 
feeling confident of that ” 

“ Yes ? ” 

“ I ask you again to be my wife.” 

“No, no!” she cried; “don’t say it.” 


DRINK 


5i 


“ I do say it, Lucy, for I know that the blessing, and not 
the curse, will triumph/’ 

She had risen as if to fly from the room. “ Don’t 
tempt me,” she said. 

I reached over her, and, in spite of her resistance, I 
put my arms about her neck and drew her back to her chair. 

“ Lucy,” I said, “ I love you — you know that. With all 
my heart and soul and strength I love you. I will not 
think of losing you. Love is stronger than any curse. I 
don’t want to think of you as one who is dead. I want your 
living heart to answer my heart. I have set my stake on 
your love, and I mean to keep it. Lucy, my dear Lucy, 
you are mine. I have been waiting for you all these years ; 
you have been waiting for me. You shall not bury your- 
self in a convent. I want you, my darling — you, you, you ! 
I want the breath of your hair, the light of your eyes, the 
kiss of your lips. Come to me, come to me, come to me ! ” 

I had liberated her, and now stood facing her with my 
arms outstretched. She swayed a moment as one who was 
struggling hard, and then, trailing her hand along the table, 
my brave girl came to me — came to me with a faint cry, 
half a sob and half a laugh, and fell upon my breast. 

That night I telegraphed for my father. 

* * * * * * * 

It all happened five-and-thirty years ago, and assuredly 
the blessing has thus far got the better of the curse. 

Hope ! It is the one infallible physician. There is no 
evil it may not conquer, for where it cannot destroy the dis- 
ease it can drive away the fear that makes the disease fear- 
ful. It is the one prophecy which is always the beginning 
of its own fulfilment; it is the one universal possession, and 
“the miserable have no other medicine.” No man is utterly 
lost who has not lost his hope. No ship is a derelict, though 
abandoned by the body of her crew, while one living soul 
remains on board. 

Ideas are eternal and immortal, omnipresent and omnipo- 
tent, and Hope is the father of all ideas that have comforted 
and sustained and strengthened and governed us since the 
beginning of the world. 


52 


DRINK 


THE GREAT HYPNOTIST 

One night, while walking along the Thames Embank- 
ment about an hour before midnight, I came upon a 
group of three homeless ones, a woman and two men, 
huddled up on a bench asleep. The woman was young and 
not uncomely, notwithstanding her rags and dirt, and pity 
for her forlorn condition prompted me to waken her and 
ask whether, if I gave her money, she could find a bed. 
She answered that she could. The two men had shambled 
up by this time, and they stood shivering after their sleep in 
the cold night air. “ She’s queer to-night, sir,” said one of 
them, “and I haven’t nothing to give her.” He was a young 
man with a husky voice and a badly nourished physique. 
I asked if the girl was his wife. He answered “No”; she 
came from Derbyshire and was a stranger in London. “ I 
picked her up about three weeks ago, and I shares what- 
ever I gets with her,” he said. The other man did not speak ; 
he was elderly and had the look of a sodden and hopeless 
dipsomaniac. I gave the girl something for her supper and 
bed; the younger man promised to leave her at a lodging- 
house in Drury Lane, and the three waifs of the under- 
world went off together. 

“A PINT O’ FOUR-HALF, PLEASE.” 

Having some misgivings about the effects of my charity, 
I decided to follow my three outcasts, and, little as I liked 
the work, I did it. I saw them cross the Strand at the mouth 
of the street leading to Drury Lane, but after that I could 
see them no longer. The policeman at the first corner had 
watched them as they went by, but the policeman at the 
second corner had seen nothing of them. Between the two 
corners there were two or three public-houses, and it was 
clear that they must have gone into one of these places. As 
I walked back toward the Strand I heard a husky voice at 
the other side of a half-open door, crying, “ Another pint 
o’ four-half, quick, please.” It was my young man of the 
bad physique who shared whatever he got with the girl 
from Derbyshire. 


DRINK 


53 


DRINK, THE HYPNOTIST. 

The moment of vexation which this common-place 
occurrence provoked speedily gave way to a sense of still 
deeper pity. As I walked home I saw the curse of drink in 
a new but obvious light. The girl was “ queer,” and she 
persuaded herself that “ a pint o’ four-half ” would do her 
good. The two men were cold, and they thought the same 
medicine would make them warm. All three were unhappy, 
and they knew that a deep drink would help them to forget. 

IS INTEMPERANCE A SIN ? 

Thinking so with a new pity for the victims of alcoholism, 

I remembered certain letters which I have lately received 
from known and unknown correspondents at home and 
abroad on a little novel published as a serial, which describes 
an attempt to cure intemperance by means of hypnotism. 
My friends take me to task for many conflicting offenses. 
One group of correspondents complain that I do not seem 
to see that drink is a temptation of the devil, only to be 
conquered by the grace of God. To subjugate the free will 
of a fellow creature, to act upon him by “ suggestion,” 
to compel him to do that which he must, and not that which 
he would, is to attempt to uproot the moral law, to unseat 
religion, and to shake our trust in God Himself. Hypnotism, 
therefore, if it is a real force, is the machinery of the Evil 
One, and to employ it is to play into the hands of Satan by 
breaking down the sanctuaries of the human soul. 

IS INTEMPERANCE A DISEASE? 

Another group of correspondents, reasoning from the 
opposite pole, protest that alcoholism is not a sin, but a dis- 
ease, and the victims of it ought to be treated as diseased ' 
persons. To attempt to cure drink by hypnotism is as idle 
and foolish as to attempt to cure it by means of the tem- 
perance pledge — a method long ago discredited in the eyes 
of scientific inquirers. Society has created drunkards by 
making laws which have encouraged the undue consumption 
of drink. It is therefore the duty of society to provide 


54 


DRINK 


asylums for its victims, and to keep them under restraint 
until tHe disease can be overcome. 

Such, briefly, are some of the objections urged against 
the treatment of the drink craving by hypnotism. 

INTEMPERANCE IS BOTH A SIN AND A DISEASE. 

In my little novel I deal with a case of inherited alcohol- 
ism in a girl. I cannot doubt that there are such cases. 
More than once I have watched their descent from genera- 
tion to generation, and marked the deadly and irresistible 
tracking down of the victims in succession as though by an 
invisible and demoniacal bloodhound. Where alcoholism 
is an inherited evil, drunkenness is more a disease than a 
sin. But where it is an acquired taint it must be (what- 
ever the extenuating circumstances) more a sin than a dis- 
ease. The root of the evil, therefore, lies always in the 
region of morals, and the only sure means of safeguarding 
humanity from the evils of intemperance is that of building 
up the moral nature. Thus far I am at one with those 
who say that intemperance is sin, and the only infallible way 
to make sober people is to call down that power which can 
come of the grace of God alone. But whatever the moral 
root of the evil, its effect is to set up a physical disease. 
The drunkard either cannot live without drink, or — which 
is the same thing in its consequences — he thinks he cannot. 
How are we to meet that condition ? I frankly take the 
view that the most direct way is to act powerfully upon the 
drunkard’s imagination. Is it possible by operating on a 
man’s mind to control the diseases of his body ? We know 
it is possible. Then if hypnotism, by its power of acting on 
the imagination, is capable of controlling habits of life which 
create alcoholic disease, what are the objections to the use 
of it ? The first objection is that it tampers with that free 
will which is the highest inheritance of the human soul. 

The answer to this is that in ninety-nine cases out of a 
hundred victims of intemperance there exists no such 
thing as free will. The great hypnotist has got hold of them, 
and their will is no longer free. Then why may we not 


DRINK 


55 


set up a wholesome influence — a good hypnotist against a 
bad one? The answer is the familiar one — that this is the 
work of the grace of God, and of the “still small voice ” 
of conscience. 

Now, if there is any force in nature, or any other 
power in law (whether it represents hypnotism or the 
asylum), by which we can arrest the drunkard’s downward 
course without waiting for the belated operation of his 
dwarfed and deadened “ conscience,” shall we hesitate to 
use it from any fear of tampering with his besotted free 
will ? 

CAN HYPNOTISM CURE INTEMPERANCE? 

I do not express any opinion on the claims of hypnotism 
to cure intemperance. If any of my readers have evidence 
of its efficacy, I shall be pleased to hear it. Neither do I 
dare to say anything about hypnotism itself on the side of its 
scientific pretensions. If any student of the subject can cast 
a new light on the mysterious and terrifying forces it brings 
into play, I shall be happy to hear from him. 

If I were a doctor I should give myself no peace in 
the presence of the world-wide curse of drink, and the claims 
of hypnotism to cure it, until I had satisfied myself on the 
subject. Not being a doctor, I have only attempted to deal 
with the moral aspect of “suggestion ” as a means of cure, 
and my conclusion has been that, great and precious as the 
human inheritance of free will must always be, the world 
has recognized the right, not only of the doctor, but also of 
the priest, the teacher, the orator, and the writer to influence 
and control it. 

THE ROLL-CALL OF DRINK. 

It is a dark and difficult problem, but one thing I see 
clearly, namely, that drink is the greatest and most baneful 
hypnotist on the earth at present, and that its influence is 
more awful than any plague, more devastating than any war. 
Looking back from more than middle life, I can hardly 
remember a case of wreck and ruin that has not been, 
directly or indirectly, the result of drink. It is a terrible 


56 


DRINK 


roll-call my memory goes through, of men of good and even 
brilliant gifts, and of bright and glorious opportunities, who 
are dead, or worse than dead, at the hands of the great 
hypnotist. Against that record I cannot recall a single case 
of a man who, free from the tyranny of drink, has been 
utterly destroyed by misfortune. The hardest blows of Fate 
seem powerless to slay the man whom the great hypnotist 
cannot subdue. And though I think intemperance is often 
as much a consequence as a cause, I truly believe that if 
drink could be utterly wiped out of the world to-night, 
humanity would awake in the morning with more than half 
its sorrows and sufferings gone. 

UNDERGROUND LONDON 

Londoners know little of some of the hells over which 
they are walking every day, and any adequate account of 
what I have seen with my eyes and heard with my ears would 
perhaps be condemned by many readers as the wildest ex- 
aggeration. My own acquaintance with the bogus clubs 
dates back to my earliest days in London. I was then a very 
young man, a journalist, representing a provincial daily 
paper, and doing the work of a general free-lance. My 
friends were few, my income small, and- my home was in 
two rooms on the edge of Clare Market. The mornings 
were usually spent in writing, and the evenings in gathering 
material on which to write. Between nightfall and two, 
three, and four in the morning, I was out on my foraging 
errands, tramping the streets east and west, north and south, 
visiting slums and cafes, music-halls and free-and-easies, 
boxing “ leads,” and drinking places of various kinds. Two 
years I spent in this way, living almost entirely alone, and 
turning out for an editor, who was good to me and allowed 
me to write practically what I pleased, an immense mass 
of disconnected matter, fugitive sketches, transcripts of fact 
and general human story. They were not the brightest and 
happiest years of my life, but, little as I thought so at that 
time, I am now by no means sure that they were not the 
most stimulating and profitable. 


DRINK 


57 


A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE. 

Out of the memory of these days one experience stands 
out with startling vividness. The story does not take much 
telling, and the effect it is to produce on the reader must 
depend largely on his own character and temperament. Go- 
ing home one night in the early hours of the morning, I 
came upon a group of three shop-girls, all younger than 
sixteen years, and all reeling drunk. They had just been 
turned out of a place in Soho that had the appearance of a 
little Methodist chapel, and they were making the sleeping 
street echo with their maudlin singing of the current music- 
hall ditty. To see a young girl, or even a boy, utterly drunk 
has always been to me the most painful of spectacles. It 
would be difficult to analyze a feeling that is made up of so 
many impressions. All I know with certainty is the fact 
that nothing hurts me quite so much; and as long as I live 
I shall remember the intensity of hatred with which I turned 
my eyes from the poor besotted girls in their muslin dresses 
and white dancing-slippers to the demure-looking hell from 
which they had come. 

THE BOGUS CLUBS. 

It was a bogus club, and that night was the night of a 
ball. Through the door, as it opened and closed, I caught 
glimpses of the interior, but I was not allowed to go inside. 
The place, which was run by a foreign rascal who had left 
his country for his country’s good, has since been raided 
and closed. It did incalculable mischief in its time in the 
utter degradation and demoralization of English woman- 
hood. The law allowed it to exist under the cover of the 
regulations which applied to legitimate clubs. It had no 
license, and it did more harm in a year than all the licensed 
houses about it could have perpetrated in a century. 

GUIDE TO VICE. 

Twenty years later, in writing the book I have referred 
to, I visited this pestiferous place again, and, under the wing 
of a suitable pioneer, I was permitted to enter it. In one 


58 


DRINK 


night and the first four hours of the next morning, I looked 
up twenty to thirty of such clubs, and some dens of still 
deeper iniquity. My guide at the beginning of the evening 
was a bogus club-keeper whose house had been shut up a 
little while before. He was found for me by the foreign 
owner of a restaurant in Soho, and under his wing I set 
out at ten o’clock at night in a jacket and cap which were 
lent to me by way of disguise. Two sovereigns were the fee 
of this dubious person for his pioneering, but he handed me 
over to somebody else towards midnight, when further fees 
had, of course, to be provided. 

ALL ARE WELCOME. 

Our range was not a wide one. I do not think we were 
ever more than half a mile from Leicester Square, and cer- 
tain of the worst haunts were in that immediate vicinity. 
The first calls were at comparatively harmless places. We 
would stop at the door of what seemed to be a private house, 
knock or ring, and be admitted immediately. In the lobby 
or hall there would be a desk at which the clerk sat taking 
tickets or toll. If you belonged to the club already you 
passed through unchallenged, but if you were not yet 
enrolled, the difficulties of nomination and election were far 
from serious. You paid twopence, received a little card 
inscribed with your name (mine, I remember, by choice of 
my sponsors, was Harry Hall), and were straightway a fully 
qualified member. I joined some twenty clubs in the course 
of that night, under the auspices of my two questionable 
guides. 

THE HARMLESS CLUB. 

There was nothing very alarming going on at the clubs 
visited between ten and twelve. Usually a variety enter- 
tainment of the crudest kind was in progress, with the 
artistes out of a branch of the profession which the public 
usually knows nothing of. They were generally persons 
having some other occupation during the day, and eking out 
their income by “ half-crown turns ” at night. The favorites 
would do three or four such turns at as many different clubs, 


DRINK 


59 


but the rank and file would do one only, and fill up the re- 
mainder of the evening by enticing people to drink, and 
earning a sorry commission on the results. Thus a girl 
vocalist, after singing on the stage in her painted face and 
the poor finery of her short muslin skirts, would come down 
into the hall and be treated by her audience. It was all very 
common and coarse, but not obviously wicked, and the gen- 
eral atmosphere of clubs of this type was merely vulgar, 
rather than positively degrading. Looking around at the 
habitues one had the feeling that the men belonged to the 
humbler class of workers in the West End, and that the 
attraction of such resorts above that of the ordinary public- 
houses lay in the greater freedom of their management, the 
apparent absence of police supervision, and the later hours 
to which they kept open their doors. 

RESORTS OF FOREIGNERS. 

These clubs were for men only, but some others to 
which women also were admitted struck me as even less 
open to reproach on moral grounds. One such was a wait- 
ers’ club, another was a hairdressers' club, a third was a club 
for hotel servants in general. They occupied houses in the 
neighborhood of Fitzroy Square, and their con cert- room 
was usually a long apartment built over the' space which had 
once been the back-yard. The membership was foreign in 
nearly every instance, French, Swiss, and Italian, and the 
men were accompanied by women who seemed to be their 
wives. There was drinking, of course, and a certain license 
in the social intercourse, but nothing that could be considered 
debasing or at all beneath the level of the less reputable 
music-halls. One felt that the poor strangers in a strange 
land used these clubs mainly as a means of meeting with 
people of their own race and tongue, and it was easy to 
imagine conditions under which such reunions might be good 
and useful. 

PROPRIETARY CLUBS. 

But towards twelve o’clock I was taken into much 
darker scenes, the clubs run, not by committees chosen by 


Go 


DRINK 


trades, but by individual proprietors. These persons were 
nearly always of foreign nationality, and frequently crim- 
inals who had escaped from their own country. Taking a 
house in some central yet quiet thoroughfare, some little 
eddy from the stream of traffic, they had established places 
which they called clubs, but which always were in reality 
public-houses without a license, and claiming the rights and 
privileges of a home. It is impossible to overpaint the 
picture presented by some of these abominable dens. They 
were the resorts of rascals who wished to enjoy themselves 
without the surveillance of the law, the haunts of the worst 
women, the sanctuaries of the basest men. Quarrels, fights, 
and in some cases crimes of violence, amounting more than 
once or twice to manslaughter and murder, were the natural 
fruits of these hotbeds of vice. 

PASSING THE BARRIER. 

My nameless sponsors had to exercise some skill in 
taking me to these places, for the zeal of the proprietors to 
keep out visitors of doubtful intentions corresponded with 
the risk they ran of fine and imprisonment in case of detec- 
tion and surprise. The knock at the outer door was usually 
answered in the first instance by the opening of a grille 
(like the grille in the door of a monastery), and then a whis- 
pered conversation of the following character:— 

“ Who’s there?” 

“ Charley.” 

“ Who’s that with you ? ” 

“ A friend I met in Hamburg.” 

“ What’s his name ? ” 

“ Harry.” 

After that there would be the roll of the door chain, the 
click of the lock going back, and the cautious opening of the 
guarded portal. But even then the preliminaries would not 
be complete, for, to meet the possible contingency of a raid 
by the police, the farce of enrollment would be gone through 
immediately, and in exchange for a subscription ranging 
from twopence to sixpence, a card of membership would be 
drawn out. 


DRINK 


61 


A SINK OF INIQUITY. 

Somewhere in the early hours I found myself within 
the walls of the infamous haunt associated with my mem- 
ory of the three young girls who were reeling home drunk. 
A ball was going on that night also ; balls were always going 
on, for in that vile place dancing was a part of the standing 
programme. This club differed from others of its kind in 
never harboring women of notoriously bad character. The 
scoundrels who ran it knew a game too good for that. They 
catered for girls in business, assistants in shops, clerks, and 
cashiers in tea-rooms and drapery establishments, and all 
the vast multitude of the innocent and thoughtless, the frivol- 
ous and ignorant among the long lines of young working 
women who are to be seen trooping home through certain 
thoroughfares between eight and nine o’clock at night. 
Setting the trap of a nightly dance under apparently respect- 
able auspices for these young creatures full of animal spirits, 
the rascals drew their victims to their den as a means of 
bringing others also — the young male fools with characters 
to be compromised and money to risk and lose. 

DEEPER AND DEEPER. 

But the worst of the hells which we visited that night 
were neither drinking dens nor dancing saloons. They were 
quiet places in silent streets, where you hardly heard the 
sound of a voice or a step. It was pointed out by my guide 
that nearly all of them bore a distinctive mark by which 
the initiated might know them from without. This was an 
opaque blind across the lower pane of the window, showing 
green with the light behind it. After a preliminary inquisi- 
tion through the door ajar, with the chain still holding it, 
one would enter with soft footsteps a quiet and shaded room, 
where a group of men sat in silence around a green-topped 
table. We had visited half a dozen such places before any- 
thing uncommon occurred, and then came a somewhat fright- 
ening adventure. 


62 


DRINK 


A LONDON GAMBLING HELL. 

In a street going off Shaftesbury Avenue, not many 
yards from the Lyric and Apollo Theatres, my guide and I 
drew up, about three in the morning, at what seemed to be 
the door to an apartment over a shop. I remember that a 
policeman was pacing in front of the place, and I have a 
clear recollection of the hollow ring of his tread as he passed 
over an iron grid in the pavement. The door was opened 
to us after the customary fencing, and then we found our- 
selves in a narrow passage with a staircase which led down 
to a cellar. Descending the staircase, we came to a white- 
washed vault which might have been built for lumber. In 
this vault, lit by two smoking oil lamps, twenty or more men 
sat playing faro about a long deal table. In a smaller vault, 
obviously intended for coals, there was a counter covered 
with bottles of ale and spirits.- 

“ Take care,” my guide whispered, “ there’s not a man 
here to-night who hasn’t done time.” 

Down to that moment I had felt no fear, but now my 
limbs began to tremble. The majority of the gamblers took 
no notice of our arrival, but I observed that the croupier 
had seen us. I saw something in his face that made me yet 
more uneasy, and partly to allay his suspicions, and partly 
to quiet my own fears, I stepped up to the table, and at the 
proper moment put down half a sovereign. Then I thought 
I caught the sound of a distinct note of warning. There was 
a cough and a low whistle, followed by a restless movement. 
Nobody looked at me, where I stood trembling from head 
to foot, but almost quicker than it takes to say it, the twenty 
odd men shambled up and slunk out. Not one of them went, 
as we had come, by the staircase leading to the street, yet in 
a few moments they were all gone, and I was alone with the 
man who had brought me. 

Then I saw that he, too, was trembling. 

“ Let’s get out,” he whispered, and in another minute 
we were in the street. I hardly knew what had happened, 
but my legs were sinking under me, and, hailing the police- 
man, who was still pacing near the door, I told him to call 


DRINK 


63 


a cab. He did so, and as we drove away my guide explained 
that I had been mistaken for a detective, that the assurance 
with which I had joined in the game had suggested that I 
had assistance close at hand, that this suspicion had probably 
saved me from being knocked on the head, and that the gang 
of ex-convicts and ticket-of-leave men who made up the 
company in the cellar had escaped by the back way which 
such human rats always keep open in case of discovery and 
surprise. 

“But -how about the policeman ?” 

“ Oh, he would have a couple of pounds to keep guard 
for the owner of the gambling hell,” said my friend/ 

“ And how would the policeman warn him of approach- 
ing danger ? ” 

“ By walking heavily over the coal-grid.” 

I give this statement on the authority of my dubious 
guide, without taking any responsibility for the truth of its 
serious accusation. 

THE OUTCASTS’ CLUB. 

But perhaps the most interesting and quite the most 
pathetic of the bogus clubs we visited that night was one 
which was intended for the poor outcasts of the streets. It 
is an interesting recollection that by the rough-and-ready 
process already described I was made a member of that club 
also. The pathos of the place lay in the fact that it was not 
a mart at which the members might ply their unhappy busi- 
ness, but a haunt in which they could meet together as social 
beings after their sorry work was over. There they were, 
in a big room up a long passage in a street off Wardour 
Street, with the male companions and protectors of their 
own class, no longer smiling and ogling and playing the part 
of decoys, but talking seriously or sadly over their troubles 
(chiefly relating to landladies and debt), and, of course, 
drinking and treating and gambling. Some of the poor 
girls had children with them— their own children apparently 
—and, though it was later than three in the morning, the 
perky’ little faces, often sweet and almost beautiful, were 
bright and sleepless. The frequenters of the club, both male 


6 4 


DRINK 


and female, were nearly all foreigners, belonging to the class 
of Belgian and French who are to be seen promenading 
Leicester Square and the lower part of Regent Street. It 
was the saddest sight conceivable. Rightly regarded, a 
woman of the streets is a pathetic picture at the best of 
times, but seen in her simple character as a human creature, 
surrounded by the domestic ties and responsibilities which 
attach to all of us, she is perhaps the most pitiful thing alive. 

AN AREA HONEYCOMBED WITH DRINKING AND 
GAMBLING DENS. 

The big clock of Westminster was booming four as, 
with candle in hand, I went upstairs to bed in the sedate old 
club-house in Whitehall Gardens, which was then my tem- 
porary home. Perhaps the sanctimonious precincts sacred 
to the innocent sleep of canons and bishops would have been 
a little shocked if they had known of the many clubs of a 
different character which I had visited during the hours of 
that rather perilous night and morning. 

But true it is that one half of the world does not know 
how the other half lives, and God forbid that in the study 
of humanity for proper purposes there should be anything 
common or unclean. 

I fell asleep with a confused sense that was compounded 
of many painful visions — visions of gambling hells, of danc- 
ing dens, of thoughtless young fellows going headlong to 
disgrace, of flighty young girls falling victims to their own 
bounding animal spirits, fed by the unscrupulous fuel pro- 
vided by some of the dregs of foreign countries, and, above 
all, of drink — drink, without which (speaking broadly) there 
can be no gambling, no prostitution, and no crime. 

THE SCENE BY DAY. 

After breakfast next morning I went over the ground 
again in order to see how far I could recognize by daylight 
the scenes I had visited by night, and I found, to my disap- 
pointment, that I could identify very few of them. This was 
not merely due to the different aspects which unfamiliar 
places present when seen in different lights, but to the per- 


DRINK 


65 


plexing fact that within certain areas in Soho, and the 
district north of it, nearly every house bore the same out- 
ward sign of being a club-house of the kind I have described. 
If the bogus clubs I visited were thirty in all, I cannot doubt 
that the gross number of such places within a radius of half 
a mile to three-quarters was three hundred at least, and in 
making this rough estimate I do not take into account the 
more fashionable haunts of the same general character which 
have always flourished west of the Haymarket. 

POLICE RAIDS AND THEIR RESULTS. 

It is now eight years since I made my round, and in 
the interval the police authorities have not been idle. One 
by one they have weeded out some of the more pernicious 
growths of the bogus club system. I have repeatedly recog- 
nized, in the police court reports of a raid here and there 
on a place bearing some flowery title, one or other of the 
scenes of my nocturnal adventure. Of the twenty to thirty 
clubs of which I was made member eight years ago, few, 
if any, now remain. The life of such places, like the life of 
the criminal and of the prostitute, is necessarily brief, but 
they spring up on each other’s ashes, and thus their evil 
influence is perpetuated, whatever happens to the individual 
existence. The scoundrels who run them pay the fine, some- 
times a heavy one, which is imposed by the magistrate, and 
then go round the corner and begin again. 

If the worst comes to the worst, and London is no 
longer possible to a man of notoriously bad character, h© 
flies to one of the greater cities of the provinces, and finds a 
happy hunting ground on undisturbed soil. There is only 
too much reason to fear that all over the Kingdom the bogus 
club is an increasing danger, and hence it was well that cer- 
tain regulations of the new Licensing Act should have been 
expressly designed to meet and defeat its peculiar evils. 

THE DRUNKARD’S ACT AND BOGUS CLUB. 

For example, it is now required that a club supplying 
intoxicants shall be properly registered, and shall furnish 
the authorities with full particulars of its organization. This 


66 


DRINK 


will cripple the operation of the proprietary places which 
have hitherto been run, as any illegal drinking den might 
be, by one unknown and irresponsible person. Then it is 
required that the members of a club shall not be admitted 
to its premises within less than forty-eight hours after their 
nomination, and this, if the regulation can be rigorously car- 
ried out, will make it impossible to profit by such casual 
membership as I enjoyed on the night of the adventure I 
have described. Next, it is required that the supply of 
liquor shall be under the control of a committee of the mem- 
bers only, that the repeated presence of drunken persons 
on the club premises, or the admission of friends for the 
purposes of drinking or gambling, shall be offenses for 
which the governing body shall be liable to heavy penalties. 
Finally, it is ordered that a club shall be struck off the 
register if established on premises where a license has been 
forfeited or refused. 

But legislation intended to control the bogus club has 
been hampered by the fact that it must control the legitimate 
club as well. It is impossible that there should be one law 
for the rich and another law for the poor, or that regula- 
tions intended to apply to the club of the Italian and Swiss 
waiters in Fitzroy Square should not also apply to the club 
of the noblemen in Pall Mall. 

On this difficulty the bogus club has hitherto been able 
to live, evading justice, and driving its coach and pair 
through the restrictions of the law. Will it escape the worst 
penalties of the drastic new Act, and continue to flourish 
in spite of legislation designed to suppress it? That is by 
no means an improbable sequel, for it exists by virtue of the 
cunning of a class who are learned in expedients to defeat 
the police. 

FURTHER LEGISLATION NECESSARY. 

In the end it may appear that the only measures capable 
of dealing with this species of vampire enterprise are such 
as may put serious limitations to the comfort and dignity 
of the reputable club. It might, for example, be found 
necessary to place all clubs under constant police supervision. 


DRINK 


67 


and this would be an irksome and humiliating condition to 
clubs governed to good ends, and even tend so far to in- 
crease the power of the police as to lead to the abuses, only 
too well known in other countries (Russia particularly) of 
government by police constable. 

But in order to stamp out an evil of any kind conces- 
sions of convenience are constantly asked for and made in 
all civilized society, and the complete suppression of the 
thousands of bogus clubs which by one artifice or another 
are now able to defy the law and demoralize the community, 
would not be dearly bought even by regulations which* might 
deprive the reputable club-house of its home-like privacy 
and comfort. 

But when the law has done its best, the duty of society 
to itself in this matter is by no means fully discharged. You 
cannot make people moral by Act of Parliament. You can 
only punish them for being immoral, and when the punish- 
ment is over the impulses which prompted the offense may 
remain as they were. Some of the worst offenses against 
law and order come of the abuse of natural instinct, and 
certainly the instinct on which the bogus club lives and has 
its being is not only natural but inevitable. The desire for 
happy social intercourse is the law of the human heart on 
which the vampire proprietors of these dens of iniquity make 
their reckoning. If there were more clubs of good character, 
the clubs of bad character would have less reason for their 
existence. 

HAVE SOCIETY AND THE CHURCH DONE THEIR 
DUTY? 

Has society done its best by the natural desire of young- 
people of both sexes to meet together with the freedom and 
familiarity of properly organized clubs? Has the Church 
done its best ? Is it a hard saying that down to quite recent 
years society has done nothing, and the Church much less 
than nothing, to satisfy that irresistible and entirely beautiful 
impulse? Can it be possible that the bogus clubs that now 
swarm over the Kingdom are the secret, and, of course, 
disastrous, revolt of poor human nature against the rigid 


68 


DRINK 


and false restraints which the Church in a greater degree, 
and society in a lesser one, has imposed upon the social inter- 
course of the sexes? 

True, that in our generation both society and the Church 
are taking other and far more liberal courses. The Church 
of England, the Catholic Church, and many of the Non- 
conformist churches have lately established mixed clubs in 
many places. But, so far as I know, the principle and plan 
of even the most liberal of these organizations leave much 
to be done in broadening their appeal before they can so 
compete with the bogus clubs as to outdo them in their own 
attractions. The boys and girls of the great cities who are 
at working shops, offices, and factories during the hours of 
the day want their evenings to be enlivened by music. 

Why not give it them? They want dancing. Why not 
give it them? They want songs and sketches and theatrical 
entertainments. Why not give them such pleasures also — 
and in your churches if need be, lest the devil should give 
them much worse entertainment in his hells? 

WHAT SHALL WE DO ON SUNDAY NIGHT IN 
THE CITIES? 

It may be that my liberality is too large, and that I will 
shock some good Sabbatarians to whom Sunday is a day of 
penance as well as a day of rest; but knowing by the evi- 
dence of my own eyes that, with all our ignorant and canting 
abuse of the Continental Sunday, the Sunday of London 
(after nightfall, and in certain districts, at all events) is 
not so much the Lord’s Day as the devil’s day, I should 
rejoice to hear that my fearless clergyman had decided to 
abandon his evening service in favor of any wholesome enter- 
tainment whatsoever which could compete with the allure- 
ments of the evil places that are open round about him. 

SINFUL NEW YORK 

Reluctant as I was at first to explore Dark New York, 
restrained by a dread that my comments might be misunder- 
stood or that publicity might do no good, I finally accepted 


DRINK 


69 


the Sunday “World’s” invitation, when I was in New York 
some years ago, supervising the staging of my play “The 
Christian,” to study the same phases of life in that Metropo- 
lis, the second city in the world, that I had previously 
studied in London. I devoted two nights and a day to it 
with sympathetic patience and what I hope was the zeal of 
a true Christian. The stenographer from the “World” ac- 
companied me and recorded my impressions. I passed from 
the darkest dens of the Chinese quarter and the Bowery to 
the more brilliant and alluring, and, therefore, more dan- 
gerous one in the Tenderloin. My observations and opinions 
were published, as follows, in two Sunday issues of the 
“World.” Taking a carriage from the Everett House, I 
drove down to Chinatown, it being too early for the wick- 
edest Bowery and other East Side resorts, Chinatown being 
the same early and late. There the first guide was picked 
up. This was a Bowery boy well known to the readers of 
the “World” — Chuck Connors. Under his guidance the 
party walked through Chinatown and Chuck explained the 
ways of life of the Chinaman, pointed out his shops and 
discussed his business, showed the cellars in which he carries 
on his more dubious industries of gambling, etc., and finally 
went to the Joss House, the Chinese place of worship, in 
Mott Street. 

The thing that most impressed me there was the telling 
of my fortune by the Chinese priest. I was told that I was 
to have good luck every month for a year and that large 
sums of money were coming to me. My mind was thus set 
at ease on the subject of the success of “The Christian.” 

WHITE WOMEN IN CHINATOWN. 

I secured some interesting information about Chinese 
life in New York, the most interesting fact to me being that 
white girls are often to be found living with Chinamen. 
One of these stories was of a white girl who had married 
nine Chinamen in succession. These girls are of many 
nationalities and come from many industries. 

Sometimes a girl supposed to be at work in a shop or 
factory is seen stealing down to Chinatown about 8.30 in 


70 


DRINK 


the morning and into one of the Chinamen’s houses, emerg- 
ing about six o’clock, the hour when the factory is closed, 
and going off home as though she had been all day engaged 
in her legitimate occupation. The point of this and similar 
stories was that the white girls were often tempted out of 
their poverty by the money that could be obtained, the 
dresses and jewelry and finery which were given to them, 
until either disaster overtook them or the fascination of 
their extraordinary life caused them to give over all re- 
straint, casting their lot with the Chinamen altogether and 
becoming permanent residents in Chinatown. “How many 
such women,” I asked of my informant, “do you suppose 
there are in Chinatown at present?” “Several hundred,” 
said he. “How many Chinese women do you suppose are 
living here?” “About fifty.” 

I was then led to the Chinese theatre in Doyers Street. 
It was a barnlike building of irregular shape. There were 
two private boxes, one at the back covered with lace cur- 
tains occupied by Chinese women and many small children, 
the other, in the position of a stage box at the front, was 
occupied by the only other white people beside the Sunday 
“World” party which the audience contained. There was 
no proscenium. The stage was a primitive platform hav- 
ing two doors right and left, one for exit and one for en- 
trance. The orchestra was seated on the stage playing 
primitive Oriental instruments and keeping up an apparent 
babble. The actors were prodigiously painted, most of them 
wearing gigantic beards. The stage manager occupied a 
prominent position on the platform and indicated the change 
of scene by a slight shifting of the chairs and tables. The 
scenes were short and frequent. The actors were all men 
with two exceptions, and the buzz of gossip which hailed 
the appearance of the first woman indicated that female 
actresses were rare on the Chinese stage in New York. 
Dialogues were spoken in a faint voice that could not be 
audible beyond the second and third row of the auditorium. 
Nevertheless, the audience, which was a crowded one, sit- 
ting and lying on the benches, seemed interested and some- 
times absorbed. There was not much laughter and there 


DRINK 


7 * 


was no applause, but the attention was close and fixed. 
There were no programmes. When the performance be- 
gan and how long it lasted was impossible to realize. We 
gathered that it was a continuous drama that had probably- 
been going on for many nights, and would continue perhaps 
for a week. Someone asks, “You see nothing immoral in 
these kind of houses of entertainment?” Indeed no. It is 
hard for us to realize its interest, for we are not in with 
the Chinese point of view. What morality this entertain- 
ment may have it is not for us to say. Whether it would 
pass a dramatic censorship would be difficult to determine. 

Coming out of the Chinese theatre our party passed 
down the street between rows of Chinese gambling hells. 
These were pointed out by our guide and seemed to be for 
the most part in cellars under the level of the street. Gam- 
bling in Chinatown, by the way, is increasing rapidly, so 
much so in fact that the rental of cellars has been in- 
creased, and it is impossible to secure one at even an ab- 
normal price. There is nothing exactly equivalent to this 
in London. We have no distinct Chinese quarter there, but 
the gambling hell of London is by no means infrequent in 
certain quarters of our metropolis. The cellar is much in 
requisition for such purpose in the district of Soho in West- 
minster, and the only points of difference outwardly would 
seem to be that here in New York there is less attempt at 
concealment than with us. Our gambling hells are often in 
coal cellars under the pavements. Entrance to them is 
secured by subterfuge and secret signs, and warning against 
surprise is often given, through the coal grate on the parapet. 

Having passed through Chinatown, I should say my 
first impression was one of its industry. The Chinaman 
obviously is not a lazy man. Whatever his other vices may 
be, he is clearly a worker. He may shuffle along the streets 
and stand apparently idle on his door step, but he is clearly 
an active person, nevertheless. His shops have a look of 
prosperity. The Chinaman is very much alive. Our friend 
Chuck Connors had been able to show us only one Chinese 
tramp in Chinatown; and the Chinaman, whatever his ex- 
cesses with opium, is obviously not a drunkard in alcohol. 


72 


DRINK 




Whether opium is a more demoralizing drug than alcohol 
is a question I can not determine. Certainly a cursory 
glance would not lead me to that conclusion. Bleared eyes 
and degraded faces are certainly to be seen here in China- 
town, but they do not compare unfavorably with the utterly 
demoralized faces to be found around drinking saloons. In 
short, I see nothing here to justify the conclusion that if 
alcohol were entirely prohibited by the American laws, and 
opium were to take its place with the sanction of the law or 
in defiance of it, the population would be still more debased. 
My conclusion from external evidences would be that the 
deadliest and most demoralizing drug known to man is 
alcohol. As to the moral aspects of this life in Chinatown, 
I saw no reason to think that the Chinaman is not a good 
husband and a good father. True, his relations with white 
women are bad. The streets are obviously full of half- 
breeds, but the Chinaman does not appear to lay his traps 
for the white women broadcast. So far as I could see, the 
white women who were demoralized by him were those who 
came to him. 

ONE OF OUR DARK MYSTERIES. 

In short, I would not conclude from anything I had seen 
that Chinatown ought to be suppressed. Most certainly I 
saw nothing that would lead me to think that in a free 
country like America the Chinaman ought to be downed. 
True, I am judging only by this hasty glance which I had; 
but then I claim to be to some extent an observer, and I 
think I should have seen the indications of any essential de- 
praving influence that might exist. Look at- these streets! 
At a late hour there were no such scenes as are found in 
many white quarters of London and indeed in New York. 
The streets were quiet, there were no quarrels, not that night 
at all events, no dancing saloons, no drinking places, no wild 
orgies of any kind. 

What the fascination is which lures these girls to that 
strange fate is still something of a mystery to me; but one 
would say that white women who live in Chinatown are not 
by any means the most depraved. Therefore it is conceivable 


DRINK 


73 


that though they may be most easily tempted by poverty or 
love of dress and the indulgence of idleness into this strange 
life, it is also conceivable that they would be easily reclaimed 
from it if good influences were brought to bear. I am glad 
to see that missions have been established in the heart of 
Chinatown for the reclamation of the white girls. 

THE WORST SPOT IN AMERICA. 

Leaving Chinatown, the “World’s” party at my own sug- 
gestion went to Mulberry Park. This was interesting to 
me from Dickens’ description of the Five Points and Mul- 
berry Bend districts when he was there years ago. But 
the scene is not as he described. The open square with its 
line of excellent houses might be the Piazza Nabone in Rome, 
for it resembles it closely in many particulars. Where are 
the rookeries, the rabbit warrens, the holes and corners 
sacred to the thieves and outcasts and never penetrated by 
the police? “Whew!” exclaimed Chuck Connors, in answer 
to my query, “all dem places are gone now and the thieves 
has got moved. A thief don’t stand no show here since 
the park was made; but the places dey worked in are still 
here and silent as a Chinese graveyard. The toughest place 
of all was the Stone Fence. I’ll show you that now.” 

Thereupon we were led to the little inner court known 
as the Stone Fence, which for many years, and up to a few 
years ago, was the worst thieves’ and thugs’ resort on the 
wicked East Side. It was entered through a dark, narrow 
passage opposite the new park. It is a stone-floored court 
with several alleys and numerous cellarways leading into 
it. Rickety tenements with saloons and shops on the ground 
floor surround it, and each of these is approached by external 
wooden stairs. 

Chuck again amazed me by giving a graphic account of 
the awful scenes he had witnessed in that dark court not 
many years ago. The place was controlled by an Italian 
with a powerful pull and was practically a stale beer “ joint.” 
This Italian had a great many of his countrymen go about 
the city draining the beer kegs outside of saloons. The beer 
thus obtained was then sold in the Stone Fence and its ad- 


DRINK 


74 


joining saloons for two cents a pint. This Italian, Tony was 
his name, had numerous thugs in his employ, whose duties 
were to rob people who could be induced or dragged into 
the place. If the beer did not put them into a condition of 
partial unconsciousness, “ knockout ” drops did. Many a 
night, Chuck said, he had seen that stone-paved court filled 
with men and women lying dead to the world in a drunken 
stupor, and most of them without a stitch of clothing on 
their bodies. Not only had Tonyas skilled robbers relieved 
their victims of all their money, but had actually appropriated 
their clothing. Large pieces of canvas were thrown over 
groups of these naked bodies. Coming to their senses, finding 
their clothes gone, and being unable to go into the streets 
naked, the victims would have to send to friends on the 
outside for assistance, and frequently actually bought back 
their own clothing. Police protection was responsible for 
the long criminal life of the “ Stone Fence.” 

THE CURE FOR ALL SUCH VICE. 

This quiet spot, then, is all that remains of the world- 
famous place described by Dickens. The change is an extra- 
ordinary tribute to the purifying influence in New York of 
municipal life, for it is true, as so many people are now say- 
ing, that the condition of the morality of the poor depends 
chiefly on the way in which they are housed. 

It is obviously a good thing to do just what the New 
York authorities have done in this instance, namely, to bar 
down the rookeries and tenements that were infected by the 
lowest class of population, and provide them with more 
reputable and more acceptable habitations elsewhere. Noth- 
ing can be better than this work of housing the poor. There 
can be no more direct purification of the lives of the criminal 
classes than the destruction of the worst of their haunts. We 
have always found it so in London. This district, for ex- 
ample, both in its present and in its former condition, seems 
to me to have almost its parallel in the old Nichol of Shore- 
ditch, as recently as ten years ago, when the old Shoreditch 
was just in the condition in which Dickens describes Mul- 
berry Bend to have been. It was the home of the lowest 


DRINK 


75 


criminal classes to be found in London. The rookeries in 
which they lived were such as no policeman dared to pene- 
trate. It was impossible to arrest a criminal who once found 
his way to this criminal sanctuary. 

All that has been changed by the destruction of the old 
district. No less drastic measures would have produced the 
result. Where the horrible dens of the past were there is 
now an open square resembling this one. Large tenement 
houses are being raised round about, and the whole work has 
elevated the moral character of the neighborhood. 

I do not know how far this change in Mulberry Bend 
has been brought about by religious organizations, but at 
Shoreditch the church has contributed greatly to the im- 
provement. My friend, Father Jay, for example, has done 
wonders in that direction. When he went there twenty or 
more years ago the place was at its worst. By the power 
of his influence and the force of his great personal character 
he was able to go in and out among the inhabitants as no 
policeman had ever been known to do. He established his 
first church in a stable, and his first club in a cellar. He has 
now a magnificent structure, and his club in the center of 
social life. He has built lodging and tenement houses that 
are surrounded by a reputable, well ordered and well housed 
population. 

Father Jay’s mission work is partly the religion of John 
Storm’s stable mission in “ The Christian,” and he is one 
of half a dozen Anglican churchmen who have served as 
models for the character. It would be very interesting to 
know if just such aids do not contribute to the reform of 
Mulberry Bend. I am told that they do, and the work of 
the Five Points Mission and the excellent efforts of several 
Italian priests have been described to me. With all due 
respect to the efforts of municipal bodies, I must say that 
we constantly find these great transformations brought about 
by agencies under the guidance of religious organizations. 

ON THE BOWERY. 

Inspection was then made of a number of typical Bow- 
ery drinking places, just ordinary saloons, the kind that are 


76 


DRINK 


frequented by the “ regulars,” who drink for drink’s sake. 
I find the drinking saloon is the same the world over. Its 
frequenters are the same, although, of course, a drinking 
place has many grades and its habitues are of many stages 
of degradation. I am not strictly an abstainer, and therefore 
I have, I trust, none of the intemperance of the so-called 
temperance party (meaning no disrespect to the more moder- 
ate and rational of that class, who are happily now so many), 
but I find the drinking saloon’s pernicious influence every- 
where. The place where men go to stand and drink for 
drink’s sake, is for the most part a pest to the community. 

Look around at any bar. Glance at every face in it. 
Is there one face there that does not bear the mark of 
demoralization that comes from such a house? Look at the 
marks of idleness, the breaking up of all the fibres of charac- 
ter, the wreck of physical health, the bleared eyes, the 
bloated cheeks and the emaciated features. Can any witness 
speak more plainly? 

It is not necessary to follow these men to their homes 
to see what they are and where they come from. The whole 
sight is a sickening and horrible spectacle, and one can not 
resist the feeling that if it were possible in one night to 
suppress the whole of that traffic which finds its expression 
in such places, the entire condition of the community would 
straightway rise many degrees. 

Of course, I am conscious of the sweeping nature of 
criticisms like these, and naturally I am not urging on any 
such course as suppression and prohibition; but I do most 
strongly feel the necessity for rigid control over traffic which 
produces such terrible and foul results. 

A PLEA FOR SOME OF NEW YORK’S WORKING 
GIRLS. 

Leaving the common drinking places, our party pro- 
ceeded to the most interesting branch of its inquiry— an 
investigation of the numerous concert halls, dance halls and 
saloon back rooms” on the Bowery and other East Side 
streets. In view of the increasing number of these resorts, 
their unshielded wickedness and the reputed vigorous attacks 


DRINK 


77 


made upon them by the daily “ press,” especially the evening 
“World,” I was especially interested in them. Much has 
been said lately about the base immorality of the ragtime 
dance, a revolting device for tempting human passions, which 
has recently been created in East Side saloons and dance 
halls, and which is becoming alarmingly popular. I wit- 
nessed the ragtime dance. What I saw was enough to shock 
the sensibilities of any man. 

The next places visited were the concert halls of the 
Bowery, the numerous drinking places where low-class vaude- 
ville entertainments are given on the stages at the end of a 
big hall filled with tables and chairs. The admission to these 
places is free, the revenue being derived from the sale of 
liqpors. The girl performers are used as decoys while not 
upon the stage doing their turns, sitting at the tables with 
visitors to the place and encouraging them to drink high- 
priced drinks and as many of them as possible. They get 
a commission on all such sales. There are scores of such 
halls on the Bowery. After visiting several of these and 
remaining in each some time, I was asked if these halls 
bore any resemblance to the concert halls which are de- 
scribed in “The Christian” as being so common in the 
district of Soho? They do to some extent resemble them, 
although we should call this kind of concert hall a “free- 
and-easy.” The concert hall I more particularly mention, 
that which exists in so great numbers in the district of 
Soho, is for the most part a club house. It is not open 
every night, only on Sunday and perhaps one night out 
of the week. It is usually a bogus club, that is to say, it 
is a proprietary place held in a back parlor purporting to be 
a legitimate club house. A book is kept at the door in 
which the names of all the persons going in are entered. 
Members on the register, which is carefully kept for the 
police supervision, are allowed to introduce friends on some 
entrance fee. There is no drinking in the dance and concert 
saloon as here, but a bar is kept in an outer chamber, and 
there liquor is often served at all hours. Frequently a bogus 
club has no drinking license whatever. 


78 


DRINK 


“RAINES LAW CLUBS” 

So far as I can see, the bogus club is manifestly an 
imposture merely intended to defeat the laws. The card 
of membership given at the door is of course a subterfuge. 
There is even less effort in New York to carry out the 
regulations of a club than would appear to be observed in 
London, where at all events the person asking admission 
is required to give a name. These bogus clubs may have 
no other object than that of defeating the license laws, 
which forbid the sale of a drink after a certain hour of 
the night, or they may conceivably be intended for a 
morally reprehensible business. Those with us, the more 
fashionable of them, such as The Alsatian* The Old Corin- 
thian Club, described in “ The Christian,” were established 
in the first instance for the use of the professions, such as 
the dramatic and musical professions, which required that 
their members should be at work until after closing hours. 
Sometimes they are betting hells. 

I understand that this kind of thing does v not go on in 
New York. The amazing fact is the same in both cities, 
namely, that the police appear to exercise no power of 
absolute suppression. 

NEW YORK’S COMPARED WITH LONDON’S 
CONCERT HALLS. 

Our London concert hall presents the same features as 
those I found in New York, in its general character, and 
the performers are apparently \of the same class. In New 
York, the girls earn five dollars or thereabouts a week and 
take turns every night, earning beside a trade commission 
on the drinks sold at the table which has the patronage of 
their company. These houses are more demoralizing in 
so far as the girl artists are used as decoys for the sale of 
drink. Dressed in their abbreviated costumes, they come 
down among the audience when their turns are over for 
the encouragement of the drink traffic. In that regard the 
atmosphere may be perhaps rather worse than in London. 
In other respects it is much the same. 


DRINK 


79 


The girl “ artists " come of the same class, and are 
open to the same temptations. They leave on one’s mind 
the same pitiful sense of the demoralization of women. 
That is the last and final impression that such results always 
leave on my own mind. Far be it for me to grudge the 
poor their pleasures so long as they can be obtained without 
either injury to each other or to those who administer them ; 
but it is impossible not to feel that nearly all such houses 
get their chief attraction by the degradation of the girls 
and women who sing and dance in them. These girls are 
by no means of the lowest class. Indeed, one can not help 
thinking that the poor creatures are in their own way trying 
to live honestly, according to their own minds. 

This thought was suggested by an instance in Volks 
Garden, No. 291 Bowery, where a girl told our party that 
she had previously lived a bad life and that only on the 
Monday before had she gone on the music-hall stage, 
apparently with an effort to live rightly and earn her living 
there by what she considered legitimate means. 

Some one asked me if I saw any Glory Quailes among 
those girls. It would be hard to say that. I should be 
doing much wrong to so pure and sweet a character as I 
consider Glory Quaile to be, notwithstanding her audacity 
and daring, if I said that there was much in common between 
her, at any stage of her life, and these poor victims of the 
concert halls on the Bowery. There is one scene in “ The 
Christian” which seems partly to justify this very natural 
inquiry. That is the scene in the Swiss club at Soho on the 
night when Glory makes her first appearance in public; but 
remember her shame at her degradation, which comes to 
her even in the midst of her poor temporary success in her 
coarse and vulgar surroundings. 

All the same I would not pretend for a moment to look 
down upon these poor creatures who live by this dubious 
industry. It is impossible to talk with some of them as we 
have done to-night, without realizing that the soul of good- 
ness is in them all. Take, for example, that girl who sang 
and danced and acted. A womanly feeling came out of her 
when she spoke to us about the accustomed dance which 


8o 


DRINK 


she was required to do and hated to do in the midst of that 
grinning mob of men. 

In another Bowery resort, at which fully two hundred 
vicious looking men and dissipated women were drinking at 
tables, the thing that most impressed me was a young girl 
of very modest appearance who came at the call of Chuck 
Connors and sat for a while with our party. She was young 
and good looking. In answer to inquiries she said she had 
gone into the life she now lived out of a tobacco factory, 
where she manufactured cigarettes. It was the old story. 
I have heard it a hundred times. The foreman or superin- 
tendent of the factory causing the mischief, poverty at home, 
poor wages, temptations from the man in power, these are 
the root of the evil. That touches on a very proud question 
which concerns the wellfare of our working women. I am 
afraid it will be found that in a great number of cases 
poverty is the root of the ordinary evil. 

It was about one-thirty o’clock in the morning when the 
notorious resort known as the Black Rabbit, No. 183 Bleecker 
Street, was visited. The “ fun ” which in this place is found, 
was at its height. Decency prevents a description of the 
scene beheld in that drinking and dance hall, where the men 
are not men and the women are not women. It is too bad 
even for the Bowery and hides itself in a side street. 

The Tenderloin was visited, and between the hours of 
two and three A. M. one of the most persistent and notorious 
of the dance halls of that district, “The Hay Market,” was in- 
spected. The dance was in full swing, and the fun was furious. 
The Cairo Cafe on West Twenty-ninth street was visited 
late that night. At the door our party were told that we 
must become members of the club before entering. Names 
were asked, but at the payment of twenty-five cents for two 
of the party the others were admitted free. Two annual 
membership tickets were given for the two quarters, the 
doorkeeper giving names to the visitors to suit his fancy. 
I was transformed into plain Jones. The same feature of 
life is not unknown in London. 

It was morning the following day before we finished 
the tramp through the slums of New York, and on the way 


DRINK 


81' 


home we looked in on some of the drinking saloons and con- 
cert halls which we had visited during the hours of their full 
height. In the mingled gray light of dawn and the yellow 
light of gas, certain of the frequenters were still to be seen 
there, no longer dancing and singing as before, but with 
their heads buried in their arms on the tables sleeping off 
the effects of the carousal of the night before. It was a 
painful spectacle, and it suggested the line of our next per- 
ambulation. This was through some of the benevolent 
institutions especially alleviating to some extent the social 
evils we had witnessed. One of the first institutions to be 
visited was the Margaret Strachan Home on West Twenty- 
second street. Here the fact which most engaged my atten- 
tion was one which strongly supported an opinion expressed 
the night before. The superintendent, an elderly lady, gave 
us her view that poverty was the chief cause of the down- 
fall of many of the girls who come within her reach. “ Can 
you give us an instance of that out of the life of some you 
have dealt with?” “Yes,” she replied; “in a certain well- 
known industrial establishment not far from here, the girls 
are supposed to be paid $2.00 per week. In reality they only 
handle $1.50, the other half dollar being stopped by the firm 
to pay the expenses of washing their uniform dresses. It is 
impossible for the girls to live on $1.50, and not long ago 
one of the girls complained to her foreman that she could 
not pay her way.” 

Our next visit was to the woman’s prison association, 
the Isaac T. Etopper Home in Second Avenue. This is an 
equivalent to the noble work that Mrs. Ballington Booth is 
doing for men. Just as Mrs. Booth takes men from the 
prison door, providing a temporary home for them and help- 
ing them to begin again under improved conditions of life, 
so the woman’s prison association takes women. The cases 
dealt with are for the most part cases of intemperance, and 
our guest was anxious to know how frequent were the cases 
of reformation from alcoholism. 

The superintendent gave a report. Even the periodic 
drink craze could sometimes be tided over, but this had to 
be done by vigorous and unremitting measures. A woman 


82 


DRINK 


under the influence of the drink craze would use every 
artifice to escape from control. She had to be kept in hand 
as rigidly as if she were in prison; but when the period 
of craving would pass, she would be as quiet as before. 

When our itinerary was over I was asked if I thought 
that the lower social life of New York is in any degree more 
base and degrading than in London? “Not one whit more 
so,” I replied. “ Your gambling hells, dancing saloons, con- 
cert halls, German parlors and bogus clubs have all got their 
counterparts in our own metropolis. They are not at all 
more shameless or less under police supervision. I should 
not say there is much difference in that regard. I hear that 
your police are sometimes charged with corruption in rela- 
tion to the low dives of your more degraded slums, but I 
should not find it difficult to establish a similar charge 
against the police of London. That is not to say that the 
heads of our department are in any degree open to corrup- 
tion of any kind, but I know that individual members of our 
police force are sometimes in the pay of the gambling houses, 
and that they have been known to blackmail the women who 
resort to the bogus and other clubs. Mind, this is not to be 
understood as a sweeping and wholesale denunciation. 
While there are people to go to these disreputable resorts 
there will be policemen to wink at them. That is in human 
nature, and to stamp it out altogether is difficult and per- 
haps impossible. All the same, the duty of the authorities 
is clear. It is to use every proper effort for the suppression 
of vice in all its forms, especially such forms as are alluring 
to the young and unsophisticated.” 


THE END. 


TALMAGE'S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 83 


TALMAGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 

Joseph's brethren dipped their brother's coat in goat's 
blood, and then brought the dabbled garment to their father, 
cheating him with the idea that a ferocious animal had slain 
him, and thus hiding their infamous behavior. 

But there is no deception about that which we hold up 
to your observation to-night (or to-day). A monster such 
as never ranged African thicket or Hindustan jungle hath 
tracked this land, and with bloody maw hath strewn the con- 
tinent with the mangled carcasses of whole generations; and 
there are tens of thousands of fathers and mothers who 
could hold up the garment of their slain boy, truthfully ex- 
claiming: “It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured 
him." 

There has, in all ages and climes, been a tendency to the 
improper use of stimulants. Noah, as if disgusted with the 
prevalence of water in his time (laughter), took to strong 
drink. By this vice, Alexander the Conqueror was con- 
quered. The Romans at their feasts fell off their seats with 
intoxication. Four hundred millions of our race are opium 
eaters. India, Turkey and China have groaned with the deso- 
lation; and by it have been quenched such lights as Halley 
and DeQuincey. One hundred millions are the victims of 
the betel-nut^ which has specially blasted the East Indies. 
Three hundred millions chew hashish, and Persia, Brazil 
and Africa suffer the delirium. The Tartars employ mur- 
owa; the Mexicans, the agave; the people at Guarapo, an 
intoxicating quality taken from sugar-cane; while a great 
multitude that no man can number, are disciples of alcohol. 
To it they bow. Under it they are trampled. In its trenches 
they fall. On its ghastly holocaust they burn. 

Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and 
they could come up from the dead, what eye could endure 
the reeking, festering putrefaction and beastliness? What 
heart could endure the groan of agony? 

Drunkenness: Does it not jingle the burglar’s key? 
Does it not whet the assassin’s knife? Does it not cock the 
highwayman’s pistol? Does it not wave the incendiary's 


84 TALMAGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 


torch? Has it not sent the physician reeling into the sick- 
room ; and the minister with his tongue thick into the pulpit ? 
Did not an exquisite poet, from the very top of his fame, 
fall, a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way to be mar- 
ried to one of the fairest daughters of New England, and at 
the very hour the bride was decking herself for the altar; 
and did he hot die of delirium tremens, almost unattended, 
in a hospital? 

Tamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand 
skulls with which to build a pyramid to his own honor. He 
got the skulls, and built the pyramid. But if the bones of 
all those who have fallen as a prey to dissipation could be 
piled up, it would make a vaster pyramid. 

Who will gird himself for the journey, and try with 
me to scale this mountain of the dead — going up miles high 
on human carcasses, to find still other peaks far above, 
mountain above mountain, white with the bleached bones 
of drunkards? 

We have too much law. 

The Sabbath has been sacrificed to the rum traffic. To 
many of our people, the best day of the week is the worst. 
Bakers must keep their shops closed on the Sabbath. It is 
dangerous to have loaves of bread going out on Sunday. 
The shoe store is closed; severe penalty will attack the man 
who sells boots on the Sabbath. But down with the window- 
shutters of the grog-shops ! Our laws shall confer particular 
honor upon the rum-traffickers. All other trades must stand 
aside for these. Let our citizens who have disgraced them- 
selves by trading in clothing and hosiery and hardware and 
lumber and coal, take off their hats to the rum-seller, elected 
to particular honor. It is unsafe for any other class of men 
to be allowed license for Sunday work. But swing out your 
signs, on ye traffickers in the peace of families, and in the 
souls of immortal men ! Let the corks fly and the beer foam 
and the rum go tearing down the half-consumed throat of 
the inebriate. God does not see ! Does he? Judgment will 
never come! Will it? (Voices '‘Yes! yes!”) 

People say, “Let us have more law to correct this evil.” 
We have more law now than we can execute. In what city 


TALM AGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 85 


is there a mayoralty that dare do it? The fact is, that there 
is no advantage in having the law higher than public opin- 
ion. What would be the use of the Maine law in New York? 
Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland, came out with a posse 
and threw the rum of the city into the street. But I do not 
believe that there are three mayors in the United States 
with his courage or nobility of spirit. 

I do not know but that God is determined to let drunken- 
ness triumph, and the husbands and sons of thousands of our 
best families be destroyed by this vice, in order that our 
people, amazed and indignant, may rise up and demand the 
extermination of this municipal crime. There is a way of 
driving down the hoops of a barrel so tight that they break. 

We can’t regulate intemperance. 

We are in this country, at this time, trying to regulate 
this evil by a tax on whisky. You might as well try to regu- 
late the Asiatic cholera, or the smallpox, by taxation. The 
men who distil liquors are, for the most part, unscrupulous; 
and the higher the tax, the more inducement to illicit distilla- 
tion. The most vigilant officials fail to discover the cellars 
and the vaults and sheds where this work is done. 

Oh, the folly of trying to restrain an evil by government 
tariffs ! If every gallon of whisky made, if every flask of 
wine produced, should be taxed a thousand dollars, it would 
not be enough to pay for the tears it has wrung out of the 
eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the blood it has dashed 
on the altars of the Christian church, nor for the catastrophe 
of the millions it has destroyed forever. 

Oh! we are a Christian people! From Boston a ship 
sailed for Africa, with three missionaries and twenty-two 
thousand gallons of New England rum on board. Which 
will have the most effect; the missionaries or the rum? 

Shall we try the power of the pledge? There are thou- 
sands who have been saved by signing this document. I 
know it is laughed at; but there are men who, having once 
promised a thing, do it. “Some have broken the pledge.” 
Yes; they were liars. But all men are not liars. I do not 
say that it is the duty of all persons to make such signature ; 
but I do say that it will be the salvation of many of you. 


86 


TALM AGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 


The glorious work of Theobald Matthew can never be 
estimated. At his hand four millions of people took the 
pledge, including eight prelates and seven hundred of the 
Roman Catholic clergy. A multitude of them were faithful. 

Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand drunkards 
had been permanently reformed in five years. 

Through the great Washingtonian movement in Ohio, 
sixty thousand took the pledge; in Pennsylvania, twenty- 
nine thousand; in Kentucky, thirty thousand, and multitudes 
in all parts of the land. Many of these had been habitual 
drunkards. One hundred and fifty thousand of them, it is 
estimated, were permanently reclaimed. Two of these men 
became foreign ministers, one a governor of a State; several 
were sent to Congress. All over the land reformed men 
were received back into the churches that they had before 
disgraced; and households were re-established. All up and 
down the land there were gratulations and praise to God. 

The pledge signed, to thousands has been the proclama- 
tion of emancipation. (Applause.) 

There is no cure but prohibition. 

I think that we are coming at last to treat inebriation 
as it ought to be treated, namely, as an awful disease, self- 
inflicted, to be sure, but nevertheless a disease. Once fast- 
ened upon a man, sermons will not cure him; temperance 
lectures will not eradicate the taste; religious tracts will not 
arrest it ; the gospel of Christ will not arrest it. Once under 
the power of this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on; 
and if the foaming glass were on the other side of perdi- 
tion, he would wade through the fires of hell to get it. A 
young man in prison had such a strong thirst for intoxicat- 
ing liquors, that he cut off his hand at the wrist, called for 
a bowl of brandy in *order to stop the bleeding, thrust his 
wrist into the bowl and then drank the contents. 

Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between a man 
and his cups! Clear the track for him! Away with the 
children ; he would tread their life out ! Away with the wife ; 
he would dash her to death ! Away with the Cross ; he would 
run it down ! Away with the Bible ; he would tear it up for 


TALM AGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 3; 


the winds! Away with heaven; he considers it worthless 
as a straw ! “Give me the drink ! Give it to me ; though 
hands of blood pass up the bowl, and the soul trembles over 
the pit, — the drink ! give it to me ! Though it be pale with 
tears; though the froth of everlasting anguish float in the 
foam; give it to me ! I drink to my wife’s woe; to my chil- 
dren’s rags; to my eternal banishment from God and hope 
and heaven ! Give it to me ! the drink !” 

The rum fiend is coming into your homes. 

Oh, how this rum fiend would like to hang up a 
skeleton in your beautiful house, so that when you open the 
door you would see it in the hall; and when you sat at your 
table you would see it hanging from the wall; and when you 
opened your bedroom you would find it stretched upon your 
pillow; and waking at night you would feel its cold hand 
passing oyer your face and pinching at your heart! 

There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated 
by the awful curse. It throws its jargon into the sweetest 
harmony. What was it that silenced Sheridan’s voice and 
shattered the golden scepter with which he swayed parlia- 
ments and courts ? What foul sprite turned the sweet rhythm 
of Robert Burns into a tuneless ballad ? What brought down 
the majestic form of one who awed the American Senate 
with his eloquence, and after a while carried him home dead 
drunk from the office of the Secretary of State? What was 
it that crippled the noble spirit of one of the heroes of the 
late war, until the other night, in a drunken fit, he reeled 
from the deck of a Western steamer and was drowned ! There 
was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He was one of 
the most classic orators of the century. People wondered 
why a man of so pure a heart and so excellent a life should 
have such a sad countenance always. They knew not that 
his wife was a sot. 

“Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink!” If this 
curse was proclaimed about the comparatively harmless 
drinks of olden times, what condemnation must rest upon 
those who tempt their neighbors when intoxicating liquor 
means copperas, nux vomica, logwood, opium, sulphuric acid, 
vitriol, turpentine and strychnine! “Pure liquors;” pure 


88 


TALM AGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 


destruction ! Nearly all the genuine champagne is taken by 
the courts of Europe. What we get is horrible swill ! 

Women ! we call upon you to help us ! 

I call upon woman for her influence in the matter. 
Many a man who had reformed and resolved on a life of 
sobriety, has been pitched off into the old habits by the deli- 
cate hand of her whom he was anxious to please. 

Bishop Potter says that a young man, who had been re- 
formed, sat at a table, and when the wine was passed re- 
fused it. A lady sitting at his side said, ‘‘Certainly, you 
will not refuse to take a glass with me!” Again he 
refused. But when she had derided him for a lack of man- 
liness, he took the gass and drank it. He took another, and 
another; and putting his fist hard down on the table, said, 
“Now, I drink until I die.” In a few months his ruin was 
consummated. 

I call upon those who are guilty of these indulgences to 
quit the path of death. Oh, what a change it would make in 
your home ! Do you see how everything there is being deso- 
lated! Would you not like to bring back joy to your wife’s 
heart, and have your children come out to meet you with as 
much confidence as once they showed? Would you not like 
to rekindle the home lights that long ago were extinguished ? 
It is not too late to change. It may not entirely obliterate 
from your soul the memory of wasted years and a ruined 
reputation, nor smooth out from anxious brows the wrinkles 
which trouble has plowed. It may not call back unkind words 
uttered or rough deeds done — for, perhaps, in those awful 
moments you struck her ! It may not take from your mem- 
ory the bitter thoughts connected with some little grave; but 
it is not too late to save yourself and secure for God and 
your family the remainder of your fast-going life. 

But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. I may 
address one who may not have quite made up his mind. Let 
your better nature speak out. Have you not the courage 
to put your foot down right, and say to your companions 
and friends: “I will never drink intoxicating liquor in all 
my life, nor will I countenance the habit in others.” Have 
nothing to do with strong drink. It has turned the earth into 


TALMAGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 89 


a place of skulls, and has stood opening the gate to a lost 
world to let in its victims, until now the door swings no more 
upon its hinges, but day and night stands wide open to let in 
the agonized procession of doomed men. 

Do I address one whose regular work in life is to ad- 
minister to this appetite ? I beg you get out of the business. 
If a woe be pronounced upon the man who gives his neighbor 
drink, how many woes must be hanging over the man who 
does this every day, and every hour of the day? 

A philanthropist going up to the counter of a grog-shop, 
as the proprietor was mixing a drink for a toper standing at 
the counter, said to the proprietor, “Can you tell me what 
your business is good for ?” The proprietor, with an infernal 
laugh, said, “It fattens graveyards !” 

God knows better than you do yourself the number of 
drinks you have poured out. You keep a list; but a more 
accurate list has been kept than yours. You may call it Bur- 
gundy, Bourbon, Cognac, Heidseck, Hock ; God calls it strong 
drink. Whether you sell it in low oyster cellar or behind 
the polished counter of a first-class hotel, the divine curse is 
upon you. I tell you plainly that you will meet your custom- 
ers one day when there will be no counter between you. 
When your work is done on earth, and you enter the reward 
of your business, all the souls of the men whom you have 
destroyed will crowd around you and pour their bitterness 
into your cup. They will show you their wounds and say, 
“You made them;” and point to their unquenchable thirst, 
and say, “You kindled it;” and rattle their chain, and say, 
“You forged it.” Then their united groans will smite your 
ears, and with the hands, out of which you once picked the 
sixpences and the dimes, they will push you off the verge of 
great precipices; while, rolling up from beneath, and break- 
ing among the crags of death, will thunder: “Woe to him 
that giveth his neighbor drink!” 

— From “Kings of the Platform and Pulpit,” published 
by the Saalfield Pub. Co., Akron, O. 

Some years ago Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage spent a day at 
the Keeley Institute located at Dwight ; 111. The following 


90 TALM AGE’S TEMPERANCE LECTURE 


extracts from his remarks while there and on his way return- 
ing voice his high appreciation of the value of the Keeley 
Institutes and the good they are performing. 

Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, in his address to the patients 
at Dwight, spoke as follows: 

“This world has so many troubles, so many struggles, 
it wants all the help it can get, human and Divine. We want 
the grace of God, and we want medicine, and we want sci- 
ence, and we want surgery, and we want the Keeley cure ! 

“Now there is no man who owes more to the grace of 
God than I do, and while I live on earth and throughout all 
the ages of heaven, I propose to celebrate it; but there are 
certain things that the grace of God does not propose to do. 
There are certain things which surgery will never do, that 
medical science has never done, and they will never do it. 

“Never let the time come in my history when I cease to 
extol the grace of God, but there are other men who need 
something besides that. Dr. Keeley struck the key when he 
said: This evil is a disease/” (Applause.) 

In speaking of a bright young man who had broken his 
father’s and mother’s heart, some time afterwards he in- 
quired what the young man was doing and the reply was : 

“ ‘He is trying the Keeley cure,’ and to make a long 
story short, he is redeemed and as fine a man in business as 
there is in New York. The Keeley cure saved him and noth- 
ing else under Heaven would. So I extol the grace of God 
and at the same time extol the common-sensical, scientific, 
earnest aid, experiment, effort, discovery. But there is no 
resisting it — we cannot read it down, we cannot talk it down 
— it will become triumphant and be recognized in all the land, 
and all the lands of earth. It has on it the mark of approval 
of the Lord God Almighty. That is my opinion, and I wish 
you all to be of good cheer.” 

On returning from the Keeley Institute at Dwight, 111., 
in speaking to the representatives of the Chicago newspapers. 
Dr. Talmage made this important statement: 

“Dr. Keeley’s method of cure or system, or whatever 
you may call it, is a fact, it is no theory, no experiment, it 
is a God blessed fact, and is simply a matter of testimony.” 


Authorized Keeley Institutes 


91 


Alabama 

Birmingham, 

2000 Twelfth Ave., North 
Arkansas 

Hot Springs, 502 Park Ave. 

California 

San Francisco, 

262 Devisadero St. 

Los Angeles, 

1022 So. Flower St. 

Colorado 

Denver, i8th & Curtis Sts. 

Connecticut 
West Haven 

District of Columbia 

Washington, 21 i N. Capitol St. 

Florida 

Jacksonville, 

Stockton & Park Sts. 

Georgia 

Atlanta, 235 Capitol Ave. 

Illinois 

Dwight 

Indiana 

Marion 

Plainfield 

Iowa 

Des Moines, 706 Fourth St. 

Kentucky 

Crab Orchard 

Louisiana 

New Orleans, 1628 Felicity St. 
Maine 

Portland, 15 i Congress St. 

Massachusetts 

Lexington 

Michigan 

Grand Rapids, 

265 So. College Ave. 

Minnesota 

Minneapolis, 

ioth St. & Park Ave. 

Missouri 

Kansas City, 716 W. ioth St. 
St. Louis, 2803 Locust St. 

Montana 

Alhambra 


Nebraska 

Omaha, 25TH & Cass Sts. 

New Hampshire 
North Conway 

New York 

Buffalo, 799 Niagara St. 
White Plains 

North Carolina 
Greensboro 

North Dakota 
Fargo 

Ohio 

Columbus, 1087 Dennison Av. 

Oklahoma 

' Oklahoma City 

Oregon 

Portland, 71 E. iith St. 

Pennsylvania 

Harrisburg 

Philadelphia, 812 N. Broad St. 
Pittsburg, 4246 Fifth Ave. 

Rhode Island 

Providence, 306 Washington St. 

South Carolina 

Columbia, 1329 Lady St. 

South Dakota 
Sioux Falls, 

Spring Ave. & sth St. 

Texas 

Dallas, Bellevue Place 
Utah 

Salt Lake City, 

334 W. So. Temple St. 

Virginia 

Richmond, 800 E. Marshall St. 
Washington 

Seattle, 1120 Kilbourne St. 

Wisconsin 

Waukesha 

FOREIGN 

Canada 

Toronto, 1233 Dundas St. 
Winnipeg, 

133 Osborne St., Ft. Rouge 
England 

London, 9 West Bolton Gar- 
dens, S. W. 




i 

wmWM 

■n 

£r$»8*‘J' h'irh ul 

.v; 

mm-Mt '■ 

ifisKsa 


vPlPliPWs 1 

: ?&S4^K ‘ 




• ;•/•■• ", ■ - J ' . \ ,A> ’»■/.■ • M-i'. i jv »» .*•>)). '■■Tjv.J. :,,- ».\* ,. V \ « v. v- . ■ ... .,. ViM , 

- 

a‘ * . ' a »' 1 t #*•<-.'• 











. v . 


r-!* > 








XI 


'• V 


i? 


. T k'J 


• 'KrA /v fi ’' Vi' 1 * 4 rJft ■• ‘fin 'ii « il» 


llpfc *sr ■ 

„ t . $ 




.y.‘V 0i .VW*- 4 'i 1 \ O 'l | U ' I 

f ■ 

•A "> .v .-a y-, •/ 





v, ■ « V " 1 &v Biw® WPiwiw *« 

; A* <1 s'.aI , \J • ■ ;. , Sfw 1 ;' • IM’st 1 * «• v .» ■ 1 » ■■ 

l . •'<•.• UN • • • s* '•!©.« 1 a>i -. a •« • a;, j 






k Ss ■ $ :> < '■■'<<" ' %. 

■ry >■■ ■&yvj .'• / wcMViaiffifiYi, 4 ry » ; 

of v: • 1 m yi«r tf » xy v QBf > t ynbfjyj \ , l . • ■ w » 

ft 4 ',*•.*• - *.V< ’5<W<Y Wifflft, * s' w 'jut? 



IS: !^v« 


1,1 ■ y ;■ ' 




■ 


' , v . ...v fam 






, nyy ' ■ #sa», » a* .1 


^1/' i'-jV.I '• ■ , , ';■ 'V>, i 


LB tia *08 






5&fe} i- ) ■•},"• \ VfwlM 

• . j - iV ; . ■„■ C IV waH Miliy 


; yri.-:‘ <. .'J , 









ERVOUSNESS 

Exhausted or Debilitated Nerve 
Force from any Cause :: :: 

1 Cured by WINCHESTER’S HYPOPHOSPHITES OF 
LIME AND SODA (Dr. J. F. Churchill's Formula) and 
WINCHESTER’S SPECIFIC PILL. They contain no 
Mercury* Iron, Cantharides, Morphia, Strychnia, 
Opium, Cocaine or Alcohol. 

The Specific Pill is purely vegetable, has been tested and pre- 
scribed by physicians, and has proven to be the best, safest, and 
rao3t effective treatment known to medical science for restoring 
Vitality, no matter how originally impaired, as it reaches the 
root of the ailment. Our remedies are the best of their kind, and 
contain only the best and purest ingredients that money can 
buy and science produce; therefore we cannot offer free samples. 

Price, ONE DOLLAR per Box by Sealed Mail 

No Humbug, C.O.D., orTreatment Scheme 



Personal Opinions: 

Dear Sirs: I have used a bottle of your Hypophosphites of Man- 
ganese for liver and kidney complaints in ray own person and re- 
ceived much benefit, so 1 will enclose five dollars and will ask 
you to send me as much as you can by express prepaid for that 
amount, until we can get it through the regular channels. I am 
confident it is just what I have been in search of for many years. 

I am prescribing your Hypophosphites of Lime and Soda, and am 
pleased with the preparation. Yours sincerely, Dr. T. J. WEST. 

I know of no remedy in the whole Materia Medica equal to 
your Specific Pill for Nervous Debility — ADOLPH BEHRE, M.D 
Professor of Organic Chemistry and Physiology, New York. 

Send for free treatise, securely seated. 

WINCHESTER & CO., Chemists 

927 EEEKMAN BUILDING, NEW YORK 
ESTABLISHED 1858 



There is 

No Stropping No Honing 

Because the famous Gillette Blades are made 
so hard and edged so keenly that each will give an 
average of 20 satisfying shaves, and then, if the 
blade pulls a little, throw it away as you would a 
used pen and insert a new one. There are 12 
blades in each razor set. 


A wiry beard and a tender skin — a soft beard 
and a hard skin — -both are alike for the Gillette, 
which will shave either with perfect comfort. 



The blade is securely clamped between the 
cap and guard, thus shielding the four corners and 
making it impossible to cut yourself — a safe safety 

in all that the name implies. 

K 

PRICES: Triple silver plated set with 12 blades 
m leather case, $5.00 ; Combination set 'with shaving 
brush and soap in triple silver plated holders, $7.50; 
Extra blades in packages of 10 for 50c. 

Sold by all Drug, Cutlery and Hardware dealers. 
Tllustrated booklet entitled “Science of Shaving” sent free 
on request. 


Oiette Sales Company, 300 Times Bldg, Hew York 




t 






































































































— 































































































‘ : -t 
























































■ 




. 

- 













































































































































































































. 























, 








. 






. I 




























































































